caa a22 4500 465821723 CHVBK 20180323112137.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170327e19900301xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/BF00047273 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/BF00047273 Pranger Rob Institute of Theoretical Biology, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherland aut Towards a pluralistic concept of function function statements in biology [Elektronische Daten] [Rob Pranger] The meaning of function statements is not clear. Several authors have come up with different explications. By interviewing biologists I tried to get a picture of how they think about ‘function'. Two explications of "Feature X of organism S has function F” came to the fore: (1) "X contributes to F and F contributes to survival/reproduction of S” and (2) "X does F and that contributes to the evolutionary development of X in S via natural selection”. Most biologists also related function to adaptation. Gould and Vrba criticize the ordinary use of ‘adaptation' in biology. They propose to use it only in the sense of features developed by natural selection for their current role and to use ‘exaptation' for features enhancing fitness, but not developed for this by natural selection. This, however, leaves a terminological gap, because as a consequence only effects of adaptations are functions. Effects of exaptations and effects which are not beneficial, like the production of heart sounds, are placed on the same level. That is not in accordance with the practice of biology. That is why a distinction is made between general, adaptive and exaptive functions: function as a pluralistic concept. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990 Acta Biotheoretica Kluwer Academic Publishers 38/1(1990-03-01), 63-71 0001-5342 38:1<63 1990 38 10441 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00047273 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00047273 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Pranger Rob Institute of Theoretical Biology, University of Leiden, Leiden, The Netherland aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Acta Biotheoretica Kluwer Academic Publishers 38/1(1990-03-01), 63-71 0001-5342 38:1<63 1990 38 10441 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer