Christopher J. Austin and Anna Marmodoro publish chapter 7 in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (edited by William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons and Nicholas J. Teh, 2018, Routledge Press, New York, pages 169-183). The full title is "Structural Powers and the Homeodynamic Unity of Organisms".
The nature of the scientific biological experiment, where one collects samples from a variety of creatures and posits that the results apply to one, ideal creature, conjure a subtle philosophical problem. This problem points to the importance of a metaphysical noumenon, which cannot be objectified as its phenomena. If a noumenon does not exist, how can its phenomena exist?
However, the problem does not end there. What if one has obtained observations and measurements of a phenomenon, but cannot clearly identify the noumenon, the ideal entity, that must give rise to these phenomena? Surely, natural philosophy must enter the picture, because gathering more data simply does not resolve the issue. Do observations of phenomena guarantee the existence of (what must be the corresponding) noumenon?