This essay focuses on themes in Explaining Cancer: Finding Order in Disorder (2018) by Anya Plutynski, a monograph that has important things to say about both the peculiarities of cancers and our theories about them. Cancer's agents of destruction are human cells that have been recruited and to some extent transformed into pathological organisms or the building blocks of tumors. Cancers both undermine and exploit mechanisms of multicellular organization, and understanding them gives rise to difficult philosophical problems. In addition to sketching Plutynski's discussion of these problems, this essay defends Christopher Boorse's account of disease from Plutynski's criticisms, and it expresses some qualms about her treatment of scientific explanation.

中文翻译：

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什么是癌症？

这篇文章的重点是《解释癌症：在无序中寻找秩序》（2018 年），这是一本专着，对癌症的特性和我们关于癌症的理论都有重要的说明。癌症的破坏因子是已被招募并在某种程度上转化为病理生物或肿瘤构建块的人体细胞。癌症既破坏又利用多细胞组织的机制，理解它们会引起棘手的哲学问题。除了勾勒 Plutynski 对这些问题的讨论之外，本文还为 Christopher Boorse 对疾病的解释免受 Plutynski 的批评进行了辩护，并对她对科学解释的处理表达了一些疑虑。