368 Alex Rosenberg
insists that the genes, and proteins they produce are still the “bottleneck” through
which selection among other vehicles is channeled. Without them, there is no way
to improve on the limited explanatory power to be found in functional biology. In-
sofar as science seeks more complete explanation for historical events and patterns
on this planet, with greater prospects for predictive precision, it needs to pursue
a reductionistic research program. That is, biology can nowhere remain satisfied
with how-possibly ultimate explanations, it must seek why-necessary proximate
explanations, and it must seek these explanations in the interaction of macro-
molecules.
But this argument leaves a hostage to fortune for reductionism about biology,
one large enough to drive home a decisive antireductionist objection. Although
the reductionism here defended claims to show that the how-possible ultimate
explanations must be cashed in for why-necessary ultimate explanations, these
explanations are still ultimate, still evolutionary — they still invoke the principle
of natural selection. And until this principle can be reduced physical law show, it
remains open to say that even at the level of the macromolecules, biology remains
independent from physical science. Thus, the reduction of molecular biology to
physical science remains an agenda item for physicalism
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