How Biological, Cultural, and Intended Functions Combine 55
In what follows, I try to show that the customary ways of distinguishing functions
(natural or biological versus artifactual or cultural, or intended versus selected) are of a
superfi cial and pragmatic nature and that no scientifi c classifi cation can be based on such
distinctions. More generally, I argue that the realm of biological and artifactual functions
cannot be divided into smaller domains demonstrating a higher ontological homogeneity
than the whole domain. However, the results of my investigations are not only of a nega-
tive nature (indicating what we have to renounce). Some are positive. In particular, in
analyzing the case of biological artifacts, a new hypothesis emerges concerning the specifi c
content by which functional attributions contribute to scientifi c understanding and
explanation.
To support my main claim, I analyze what is going on with functions at three decisive
points:
a) when the artifactual encounters the biological
b) when new functions become culturally established
c) when new artifacts are invented.
4.3 The Artifactual and the Biological
The changes brought about in plants and animals through domestication and cultivation
in prehistoric times may be seen as the fi rst examples of humans hijacking biological
mechanisms to their own ends. To what extent this resulted from the pursuit of well-defi ned
and conscious objectives remains debatable. However, the artifi cial selection carried out
by breeders in the nineteenth century raises no such doubts: they knew perfectly well what
they were doing. More recently still, humans have extended the scope of their activities
with the creation of genetically modifi ed organisms (GMO). In all such cases the organ-
isms have traits whose functions result both from natural mechanisms and human inten-
tional actions. As a consequence, it seems that such functions deserve to be seen as both
artifactual and biological. Is it, however, possible for them to be both?
It is because such functions depend on natural selection that they deserve to be called
“biological.” Artifi cial selection does not replace natural selection—it relies on it. Artifi cial
selection steers natural selection in a particular direction in order to realize short-term or
long-term human aims. With GMO, humans intervene in another angle of the evolution
process, the mutation angle, but natural selection still gets its way later, be it relative to a
natural or to a controlled environment. As long as some general features of natural life
and reproduction remain, natural selection will always play a part. Artifi cially introduced
or enhanced traits usually spread because, in relation to a context in which human activi-
ties and interests matter, they make the organisms possessing their traits more fi t to
compete in the Darwinian struggle for existence. This clearly emerges from the cultivated
wheat example considered later in this section.