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Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science
Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of the...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7143661/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32178269 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17061833 |
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author | Abdin, Ahmad Yaman Jacob, Claus Kästner, Lena |
author_facet | Abdin, Ahmad Yaman Jacob, Claus Kästner, Lena |
author_sort | Abdin, Ahmad Yaman |
collection | PubMed |
description | Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of these arrows may indicate causal or componential relations, others may represent temporal or operational orders. Importantly, what kind of relation an arrow represents may not only vary with context but also be underdetermined by empirical data. In this manuscript, we investigate how an analysis of pharmacological mechanisms in terms of producing and underlying mechanisms—as discussed in the contemporary philosophy of science—may shed light on these issues. Specifically, we shall argue that while pharmacokinetic mechanisms usually describe causal chains of production, pharmacodynamics tends to focus on mechanisms of action underlying the in vivo effects of a drug. Considering the action of thyroid gland hormones in the human body as a case study, we further demonstrate that pharmacodynamic schemes tend to incorporate entities and interactions on multiple levels. Yet, traditional pharmacodynamic schemes are sketched “flat”, i.e., non-hierarchically. We suggest that transforming flat pharmacodynamic schemes into mechanistic multi-level representations may assist in disentangling the different kinds of mechanisms and relations depicted by arrows in flat schemes. The resulting Baumkuchen model provides a powerful and practical alternative to traditional flat schemes, as it explicates the relevant mechanisms and relations more clearly. On a more general note, our discussion demonstrates how pharmacology and related disciplines may benefit from applying concepts from the new mechanist philosophy to guide the interpretation of scientific diagrams. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7143661 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-71436612020-04-14 Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science Abdin, Ahmad Yaman Jacob, Claus Kästner, Lena Int J Environ Res Public Health Perspective Talk of mechanisms is ubiquitous in the natural sciences. Interdisciplinary fields such as biochemistry and pharmacy frequently discuss mechanisms with the assistance of diagrams. Such diagrams usually depict entities as structures or boxes and activities or interactions as arrows. While some of these arrows may indicate causal or componential relations, others may represent temporal or operational orders. Importantly, what kind of relation an arrow represents may not only vary with context but also be underdetermined by empirical data. In this manuscript, we investigate how an analysis of pharmacological mechanisms in terms of producing and underlying mechanisms—as discussed in the contemporary philosophy of science—may shed light on these issues. Specifically, we shall argue that while pharmacokinetic mechanisms usually describe causal chains of production, pharmacodynamics tends to focus on mechanisms of action underlying the in vivo effects of a drug. Considering the action of thyroid gland hormones in the human body as a case study, we further demonstrate that pharmacodynamic schemes tend to incorporate entities and interactions on multiple levels. Yet, traditional pharmacodynamic schemes are sketched “flat”, i.e., non-hierarchically. We suggest that transforming flat pharmacodynamic schemes into mechanistic multi-level representations may assist in disentangling the different kinds of mechanisms and relations depicted by arrows in flat schemes. The resulting Baumkuchen model provides a powerful and practical alternative to traditional flat schemes, as it explicates the relevant mechanisms and relations more clearly. On a more general note, our discussion demonstrates how pharmacology and related disciplines may benefit from applying concepts from the new mechanist philosophy to guide the interpretation of scientific diagrams. MDPI 2020-03-12 2020-03 /pmc/articles/PMC7143661/ /pubmed/32178269 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17061833 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Perspective Abdin, Ahmad Yaman Jacob, Claus Kästner, Lena Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title | Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title_full | Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title_fullStr | Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title_full_unstemmed | Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title_short | Disambiguating “Mechanisms” in Pharmacy: Lessons from Mechanist Philosophy of Science |
title_sort | disambiguating “mechanisms” in pharmacy: lessons from mechanist philosophy of science |
topic | Perspective |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7143661/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32178269 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17061833 |
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