I defend the use of early Covid-19 models in support of social distancing measures against criticisms. Paying close attention to the epistemology of scientific modeling and to what is required of models for the purpose of underwriting precautionary reasoning suggests that epidemiological models were adequate for the purpose of supporting social distancing measures as a form of precaution.

The precautionary principle is often put forward as potentially useful guide to avoiding catastrophe under conditions of uncertainty. But finding an adequate formulation of the principle runs into a problem when needed precautionary measures also have potentially catastrophic consequences – the imperative to avoid catastrophe appears to recommend both for and against the measures. Drawing from the early pandemic, we suggest a way around this “problem of paralysis”: We should recognize and incorporate an asymmetry between our options, based on whether there is a possibility of intervening later to prevent the worst outcome.

Cancer biology features ascriptions of normal function to cancer. Normal functions are activities that parts of systems, in some minimal sense, should perform. Cancer biologists’ ascriptions pose difficulties for two main approaches to normal function, leaving a gap in the literature. One approach claims that normal functions are activities that parts are selected for. However, some parts of cancers have normal functions but aren’t selected to perform them. The other approach claims that normal functions are part-activities that are typical for the system and contribute to survival/reproduction. However, cancers are too heterogeneous to establish what’s typical across a type.

Elselijn Kingma (2018, 2019) argues that the popular view that the foetus is merely contained by the mother is inconsistent with the biology of pregnancy. Instead, she argues that the foetus is a part of the mother based on various physiological criteria. I argue that immune tolerance, a criterion of parthood for Kingma, cannot be a criterion for spatiotemporal parthood because it is nontransitive and symmetrical while spatiotemporal parthood is transitive and antisymmetrical. However, it is clear that the relation is stronger than containment. So, I propose that the foetus and mother overlap - what Finn (2021) calls the Overlap View.