Philosophy of Biology

Information from our senses, memories and thoughts is bound together into a unified whole that constitutes our experience of our world, our Umwelt. However, our ability to investigate our Umwelt through standard Western-derived neuroscience is limited, because of the third-person approach that undergirds the field. Achieving greater coherence in our understanding requires the addition of an approach which is fundamentally integrative. The most comprehensive first-person approach to the nervous system can be found in the introspective traditions of Tantric Hinduism. In (...) this review, we explore the hierarchical ordering of the senses in Hinduism (from most gross to the most subtle, the latter being closer to consciousness), and how this may be linked to sensorimotor coupling in the parietal cortex. We demonstrate how this ordering parallels the developmental history of the sensory cortices over the course of vertebrate evolution. The synergy between biosemiotics and neurophenomenology is made clear, as the idea of a “Great Chain of Semiosis” can be very helpful in understanding the reasons behind the emergence of this sensory hierarchy. The structures of the Subtle body described in Hindu Tantra should be seen as semiotic nodes used by the conscious agent in interacting with the world around it. We propose that metaphor ties together the various sensory mappings of the body at the cognitive level. Integrating insights from Hindu Tantra will help modern science better investigate questions of agency, meaning and semiosis in organisms. (shrink)

Conflicts within the tsetse fly belt revealed a strong correlation between the dynamics of bovine trypanosomosis and the insurgency involving farmers and herders in Nigeria and parts of West Africa. This study examined the history, causes and influence of farmers-herdsmen conflicts on banditry, terrorism and food security as it relates to the epidemiology of African animal trypanosomosis (AAT). A combination of literature database searches, semi-structured questionnaires, and mathematical modeling was employed. The study found that transhumance contributes significantly to conflicts between (...) farmers and herdsmen. An average of 6.46 persons per attack were reported between 2005 and 2021. Only 8.4 $$\%$$ (95 $$\%$$ CI: 5.0 $$-$$ 12.9) of farmers and 18.2 $$\%$$ (95 $$\%$$ CI: 12.4 $$-$$ 25.4) of herdsmen have engaged in conflict resolution efforts. The study shows that both conflict and the spread of trypanosomosis can be effectively controlled when $$R_0 < 1$$, ensuring that the sub-population remains in the basin of attraction of the trypanosomosis-conflict-free equilibrium ( $$T_{0c}$$ ). The partial derivative of the basic reproduction number, $$R_0$$, with respect to improved conflict resolution, suggests that halting transhumance can prevent a portion of the cattle recruitment rate ( $$\Lambda_c$$ ) from becoming infected with AAT. Climate change exacerbates these issues, leading to settlement and resettlement strategies within the fly belt regions. The model indicates that the basic reproduction number can only be reduced to less than one ( $$R_0 < 1$$ ) to become globally asymptotically stable if there is effective conflict resolution involving both farmers and herders. The study advocates for the establishment of ranching in tsetse-free zones with adequate social amenities, improved marketing strategies for animals and animal products led by government agencies through public-private partnerships, the banning of open grazing, and strict enforcement of policies against violators. (shrink)

We revisit John Worrall’s old but still prominent argument against the view that randomization balances the impact of both known and unknown confounders across the treatment and control arms. We argue that his argument involving indefinitely many possible confounders is at odds with statistical theory as it (1) presumes that the purpose of randomized studies is obtaining perfect point estimates for which perfect balance is needed; (2) mistakes equalizing each confounder with the overall (average) impact of all confounders, and (3) (...) assumes that the joint effect of an infinite series of confounders cannot be bounded. We defend the role of randomization in balancing the impact of confounders across the treatment and control arms by putting forward the statistical sense of the balance claim. It involves the following three commitments: (1) randomization balances confounders in expectancy, (2) for RCTs to deliver unbiased estimates of the causal effect (true average treatment effect), the balance in the average effect of all confounders and not balancing each confounder is sufficient, and (3) randomization allows for calculating the probability of deviating from the balance. The paper includes a review of how the balance claim has been understood so far and discusses recent arguments supporting randomization balancing the impact of confounders in expectancy and the crucial role of the average impact of all actual confounders, and shows how statistical analysis of RCTs conducted both at the design and analysis stage makes possible estimating the probabilities of deviating from the balance. (shrink)

The selected effects theory is supposed to provide a fully naturalistic basis for statements about what biological traits or processes are for without appeal to final causes or intelligent design. On the selected effects theory, biologists are allowed to say, for instance, that hindwing eyespots on butterfly wings serve to deflect predators’ attacks away from vital organs because a similar fitness-enhancing effect explains why eyespots themselves were favoured by natural selection and persisted in the population. This is known as the (...) explanatory dimension of the selected effects theory. According to it, appealing to the fitness-enhancing effect of a certain trait or process is sufficient to explain its current presence in a population, namely, why it persisted and still exists in that population. In this paper, however, I will call such a claim into question, and I will do so by discussing a mathematical Hawk-Dove example and a real case scenario taken from evolutionary biology, that of Perissodus microlepis. These are scenarios in which the selective filter does not allow variants with the highest fitness at a certain moment to prevail over their available alternatives. In similar cases, I will argue, citing fitness-enhancing effects does not represent an adequate explanation of what happens in the population, undermining the explanatory dimension of the selected effects theory. (shrink)

The article presents and critically discusses the concept of environmental interventionism, which treats interference in the functioning of ecosystems to protect free-living animals from suffering as a general ethical obligation. The strong version of this approach postulates the need to help animals suffering from natural phenomena, and the extreme version recommends the permanent reconstruction of animal bodies using biotechnology. The dispute between proponents and opponents of this concept can be reduced to a fundamental dispute over the primacy of two sets (...) of ethical values: the individual values of particular animals, characteristic of the animal welfare stance, and the values attached to the supra-individual manifestations of the biosphere, characteristic of the environmentalist ethic. The arguments presented in the article justify the application of the principles of environmental ethics in order to protect the biosphere against the contemporary ecological crisis and clearly result from Author’s full acceptance of the assumptions of ethical naturalism. The paper attempts to show that the arguments for the validity of interventionism are based on partially erroneous assumptions and questionable conclusions. These include: ignoring knowledge of the advanced cognitive abilities of many groups of animals and their implications for ethical obligations towards them; clinging to an archaic, individualistic vision of the functioning of the biosphere; super-naturalising the approach to individual suffering; and making an unjustified transfer between intrinsic and instrumental values ascribed to animals. By basing the hierarchy of animals and their life interests used to prioritize interventionism on the arbitrary opinions of humans, this concept is clearly anthropocentric. The article presents arguments for recognising the strong and extreme version of instrumentalism as harmful from the point of view of environmental ethics and biosphere protection. (shrink)

We discuss how biosemiotics sheds light on a problem that characterizes the social reproduction system today in globalisation, how social and political systems threaten life on the planet. These reflections engage global semiotics developed as semioethics where “ethics” resounds as entanglement in the I-other relation. Like medical semeiotic at the origin of semiotics, semioethics elects life as a primary value. Biosemiotics reveals the condition of interconnectivity, co-implication, interdependency among all lifeforms. As such it is an important reference for semioethics which (...) in turn underlines how life in the social, political, economic and broadly cultural spheres is subject to the biological, thus how values, ideologies and responsibilities enter the same great semiobiosphere where bodies and signs are co-dependent and respond to each other in semiosis. Central notions for signs and society are questioned in this framework, firstly humanism of identity. I-other entanglement is global, the condition for life to flourish. Challenged by human and ecological emergency, semioethics considers the biocultural implications and appeals to global responsibility. (shrink)

Sex is fundamental to many organisms. It is through sexual reproduction that humans, and many metazoans (multicellular eukaryotes in the animal kingdom), propagate our species. For more than 150 years, sexual reproduction within metazoans has been understood to rely on the existence of a discrete category of cells (germ cells) that are usually considered uniquely separate from all other cells in the body (somatic cells), and which form a cell lineage (germline) that is sequestered from all somatic cell lineages. The (...) consideration of germ cells and germline as the lone source of reproductive potential within metazoans has allowed many investigators to place the hereditary and evolutionary burdens of sexually reproducing lineages solely within these cells and cell lineages, making them central to many important topics within biology, such as units of selection, transmission and population genetics, Darwinian evolution, and individuality. Regarding these topics, there is a predominant and shared understanding of germ cells, somatic cells, and the ways in which these two relate to each other that is rarely critically evaluated. In this article, I lay out how germ cells and germline within metazoans are understood by a majority of scientists and philosophers, both now and historically, by sketching out what I call the predominant epistemic framework of germ. I show how this framework conflicts with empirical evidence, propose a series of revisions to realign it with this evidence, and indicate why such revisions are urgently needed by highlighting the case of somatic cell genome editing. (shrink)

The organism is the central entity in biological science. However, consensus with regard to the definition of the underlying concept is lacking. Moreover, several ambiguous life forms exist that challenge current definitions of the term. Based on a comprehensive analysis of the available literature, we provide an overview of the criteria and approaches that have been previously used to define organismality. In addition, we highlight non-paradigmatic biological entities to identify problems that challenge definitions of organismal units. To address these issues, (...) we propose a cross-disciplinary definition of the organism concept and provide a list of key criteria that allow both paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic cases to be unequivocally classified. In this way, our work not only provides newcomers with an overview of this exciting field, but also enhances communication across disciplines. (shrink)

In recent years the study of well-being has attracted considerable attention, fostering hope that the scientific community will ultimately succeed in discovering its very nature, thereby emulating successful scientific projects in other disciplines. However, there have been recurring worries about how to measure and define well-being. In this context, Hersch (Br J Philos Sci 73:1045–1065, 2022) has recently argued that we could progressively alleviate these worries through an iterative dialogue between theory and measurement, by seeing them as stemming from a (...) coordination problem. In this article, I argue that the concept of well-being fails to meet the prerequisites for Hersch’s approach. If the latter is the best defense of the capacity of science to uncover the nature of well-being, it follows that the science of well-being should probably relinquish this ambition. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to explore a set of epistemological and ontological issues regarding the historical and philosophical role of placebos in the contested history of antidepressants. Starting from an account of the dual nature of the placebo as both an epistemic and a therapeutic tool, and against the background of the heated debates on the efficacy of second-generation antidepressants, I propose two related arguments. First, I argue that placebos as controls played a crucial but paradoxical role in (...) the rise of so-called evidence-based approaches to depression. Second, I discuss how current research on placebo effects puts into question some of the most crucial assumptions of psychiatric technoscience regarding the ontology of affective experiences. Ultimately, this paper aims to probe discussions around placebos, placebo effects, and the status of depression both as a diagnostic category and a lived experience. (shrink)

Life cycle diagrams are ubiquitous in a variety of scientific materials, ranging from introductory biology textbooks to professional publications. These diagrams typically depict stages of a particular organism’s life connected by arrows, such as, for a frog: egg(s) → embryo → tadpole → tadpole with two legs → tadpole with four legs → young frog → adult frog → egg(s). In this paper, we present a critique of this sort of life cycle diagram, drawing on both metaphysics and epistemology of (...) science. We suggest that these diagrams do not accurately represent an organism’s life stages, its reproduction, or species persistence. These misrepresentations have implications for scientific reasoning, explanatory efficacy, as well as pedagogical efficacy. To address the shortcomings of these diagrams, we propose a new kind of diagram which we call the life spiral diagram. The life spiral diagram more accurately reflects an organism’s life stages, its reproduction, as well as species persistence. Thus, the life spiral diagram better aids scientific reasoning, explanations of life processes, and learning. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider whether a straightforward answer can be provided to the following question regarding function ascriptions in genome biology: when does the activity of a genomic segment become functional or, perhaps, fully functional? We respond by examining de novo explanatory models for the emergence of genes, i.e., functional genomic entities. Our case study is especially pertinent to discussions about genome functionality, because what is meant by function, then, is crucial in assessing what constitutes a de novo gene (...) origination. We show that, according to these models, there is no single point at which a genome segment acquires functionality. On the contrary, there is a continuum going from non-functional, through proto-functional, to fully functional. This suggests a gradational functionality for genomic objects, instead of an all-or-nothing one, as implied by standard views in the debate on biological functions. It has recently been argued by Matthewson (Biology Philos 35:4, 2020) that proper functions come in degrees because natural selection comes in degrees. We extend that argument and show that the continuum of functionality or, at least, proto-functionality, can be applied to genomic segments even before they are under the influence of natural selection. Accordingly, we argue that a weak etiological account is most suitable for capturing the phenomenon of new biological functions arising at the genomic level. (shrink)

A Comparative Analysis of the similarities between longevity in Koi and Empires.

Charbonneau ( 2014 ) and Papale ( 2021 ) challenge the necessity of reproduction for evolution by natural selection (ENS) by contending that what really matter for ENS are memory and (re)generation at the population level, rather than lineage-forming reproduction at the local level. In this article, we critically evaluate their reproduction-independent accounts of ENS and defend the importance of lineage-forming reproduction in paradigmatic ENS on both empirical and theoretical grounds. We argue that none of the empirical cases they cite (...) can be used as evidence to demonstrate the existence of paradigmatic ENS without lineage-forming reproduction, and adopting their reproduction-independent views would lead to an account of ENS that is both too liberal and too strict. (shrink)

The pursuit of science is a specific form of cognitive activity that is guided by concrete heuristic objectives and corresponding standards in terms of its methodological approach. The philosophy of science pursues the goal of analyzing scientific cognitive activity against the background of epistemology. The core problem of traditional philosophical epistemology, and with it the current philosophy of science, according to my thesis, consists in the heuristic short-circuiting of the content with the object of knowledge. This manifests itself directly in (...) its focus on the heuristic standard of certainty of our knowledge, based on the metaphysical assumption of the determinacy of things in themselves (which correlates with the supposition of the mode of description as the paradigm of cognitive activity in general). The main thesis of this paper will be that this short-circuit leads to a suppression of the role of heuristics as a fundamental factor of cognitive activity, and in its consequence to a descriptive misunderstanding of the deconstructive mathematical heuristic of physics (with its focus on dynamical phenomena) in terms of mere decomposition. Owing to the role of physics as a fundamental science, the consequences of this misunderstanding are far-reaching. Particularly for the scientific self-understanding of biology, namely in the sense of the heuristic goal of analytically decomposing biological entities into physical ones and reducing biological phenomena to physical laws. This goal clearly contradicts the deconstructive methodological approach of physics, whose only yardstick is the appropriateness of the reconstruction of the phenomena under consideration. (shrink)

Das Betreiben von Wissenschaft ist eine spezifische Form von Erkenntnistätigkeit, die bezüglich ihrer methodischen Vorgangsweise von konkreten heuristischen Zielsetzungen und korrespondierenden Maßstäben geleitet ist. Die Wissenschaftstheorie verfolgt das Ziel einer Analyse der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnistätigkeit vor dem Hintergrund der Erkenntnistheorie. Das Kernproblem der traditionellen philosophischen Erkenntnistheorie, und mit ihr der gängigen Wissenschaftstheorie, so meine These, besteht in dem heuristischen Kurzschluss des Inhalts mit dem Gegenstand der Erkenntnis. Dieser manifestiert sich auf direkte Weise in ihrem Fokus auf den heuristischen Maßstab der Gewissheit (...) unseres Wissens, gestützt auf die metaphysische Annahme der Bestimmtheit der Dinge an sich (der die Annahme von Deskription als Paradigma von Erkenntnis im allgemeinen korrepondiert). Die Hauptthese dieser Abhandlung wird sein, dass dieser Kurzschluss zu einer Ausblendung der Rolle der Heuristik als grundlegender Erkenntnisfaktor führt, und in seiner Konsequenz zum deskriptiven Missverständnis der dekonstruktiven mathematischen Heuristik der Physik (mit ihrem Fokus auf die dynamnischen Phänomene) im Sinne von bloßer Dekomposition. Die Folgen dieses Missverständnisses sind, der Rolle der Physik als Grundlagenwissenschaft geschuldet, weitreichend. Insbesondere für das wissenschaftliche Selbstverständnis der Biologie, im Sinne des Ziels, biologische Entitäten analytisch in physikalische zu zerlegen und biologische Phänomene auf physikalische Gesetze zu reduzieren. Dieses Ziel widerspricht klar der dekonstruktiven methodischen Vorgangsweise der Physik, deren einziger Maßstab in der Angemessenheit der Rekonstruktion der betreffenden Phänomene besteht. (shrink)

The evolutionary emergence of consciousness is a research topic that has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. In a brief span of time, the debate surrounding various models in this area is driving the development of an increasingly specific research agenda. In this article, we examine the main available models of emergence. All the models we discuss assume, with varying degrees of caution, that consciousness emerged through convergent evolution in three distinct phyla within the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, they provide (...) a unified account that aims to comprehensively cover all independent tokens of emergence. After analyzing the suitability of this unifying strategy through the lens of contemporary evolutionary theory, we recommend adopting a token-by-token, phylum-by-phylum approach. At this point, we emphasize the advantage of accumulated comparative knowledge regarding vertebrate evolution, advocating for an interoceptive view of the emergence of consciousness in vertebrates. (shrink)

Since the onset of the digital revolution, humankind has experienced an unprecedented acceleration of changes triggered by technological advancements. Frequently used digital media have unquestionably penetrated our everyday life, shaping human cognition in multiple ways. The rise of artificial intelligence, which coevolved with a new, interdisciplinary field of cognitive science, has amplified these effects, contributing new ways of affecting human society, in terms of efficient human-machine interaction and knowledge generation and accumulation, at an exponential rate. Simultaneously, cultural shifts driven by (...) globalization and social media have fostered new modes of communication, identity formation, and knowledge dissemination on a global scale. Understanding the intricate dynamics of techno-cultural evolution and its influence on cognition is essential for comprehending the contemporary society and preparing it for the future challenges. We need to adapt for the current and future information environments and digital landscapes, improving human resilience to new technologies and addressing core human vulnerabilities. Thanks to human flexibility, enabled by neural plasticity, that may be feasible, ideally combined with alleviation of known negative effects of digital technologies. (shrink)

Cancers are hard to treat, and this is largely because cancer cells evolve and diversify through space and time, in patients. The study of clonal evolution relies on the study of cancer cell lineages, and the cutting of these lineages into clones, each clone representing cancer cells with distinctive properties relevant to cancer development and treatment. This notion of clone implies a (set of) simplification(s) that misrepresents the reality. The simplification has been useful and productive, but I argue that maintaining (...) a critical awareness of what is done through this simplification can also be useful and productive. I distinguish three types of simplifications and show that each can offer a panel of therapeutic alternatives that may complement our arsenal of strategies in the battle against clones. The clinical challenge of better treating cancer partly relies on better defining (delineating) clones, but also partly on the more fundamental way we conceive clones. With or without changing the definition, changes in the way we conceive of clones induce changes in the way we treat clones. (shrink)

One of the consequences of global warming is reduced final body sizes in animals of different orders, mainly in aquatic ectotherms like fish or water-breathing invertebrates. In this article, we identify August Pütter (1879–1929) as the originator of what is now called the “temperature–size rule” and as the first physiologist to develop a mechanistic explanation for this phenomenon. While Pütter’s growth model was indirectly influential through its adaptation by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972), his explanation of the influence of temperature on (...) growth remained either unknown or misunderstood. In this contribution, we reconstruct the theoretical framework of his model and compare it to recent critiques of mechanistic models on growth and temperature. As we argue, Pütter’s theory of “similarities of growth” provides explanations for observed temperature–size patterns trends that avoid later accounts of underlying “biological laws.” While recent findings suggest that some aspects of Pütter’s model need revision—for example, the proposed exponents of the anabolic and catabolic terms in his growth equation—we argue that his mechanistic model was designed in a way that could account for the multiple apparent exceptions to the temperature–size rule that were recently found. (shrink)

Sample preparation is the process of altering a naturally occurring object into a representative form that is amenable to scientific inquiry. Preparation is an important preliminary to data collection, ubiquitous in the life sciences and elsewhere, yet relatively neglected in historical and philosophical literature. This paper presents a detailed historical case study involving the preparation and study of blood crystals in the nineteenth century. The case is used to highlight significant features of preparation, which aid our understanding of the epistemology (...) of sciences in which preparations play an important role. First, it shows the role of technical knowledge in efforts to characterize a scientific phenomenon or object of interest. Especially in early stages of characterization, scientists improve their understanding of what they are preparing by better understanding their preparation procedures. Second, this case contributes to recent views of characterization as a relatively autonomous domain of scientific activity. It shows how preparation functions as a site for integrating different experimental methods, and the difficulties that ensue. In light of these considerations, the case shows how characterization is capable of shaping or constraining explanatory pursuits as much as it is guided by them. (shrink)

Physarum polycephalum, also known more colloquially as 'the blob', 'acellular slime mould', or just 'slime mould', is a unicellular multinucleate protist that has continued to attract the interest of biologists over the past century because of its complex life cycle, unique physiology, morphology, and behaviour. More recently, attention has shifted to Physarum as a model organism for investigating putative cognitive capacities such as decision making, learning, and memory in organisms without nervous systems. The aim of this Element is to illustrate (...) how Physarum can be used as a valuable tool for approaching various topics in the philosophy of biology. Physarum and its behaviour not only pose a challenge to some of the received views of biological processes but also, I shall argue, provide an opportunity to clarify and appropriately sharpen the concepts underlying such received views. (shrink)

The concept of biological sex guides research, clinical practice, science funding policy, and contemporary political discourse. Despite some substantive differences, all existing candidate philosophical accounts of sex assume its legitimacy as a biological concept. Here, we challenge this view. We argue against realism about biological sex, and that eliminating biological sex from large swaths of biological theory and practice may be preferable compared to conventionalist or fictionalist anti-realisms. There are serious social and epistemic costs to using “biological sex” in place (...) of more specific alternatives. Because of this, biologists and philosophers of science should consider eliminativism about the concept of biological sex. Biological sex eliminativism is worth taking seriously, and it can play important roles in philosophical debate and biological practice, even for those who remain skeptical. The methodological consequences of biological sex eliminativism are compatible with best practices for inquiry in the biological and biomedical sciences, with inclusive approaches to the study of sex and gender, and with feminist philosophical and methodological recommendations. Taking eliminativism seriously reveals important disagreement about the work that a concept of biological sex should do, and imposes a contrastive burden on would-be rivals. (shrink)

The Price equation provides a comprehensive representation of evolutionary processes. Since its original formulation by George Price, it has been used to model a variety of phenomena in quantitative genetics and related fields. However, there is no consensus on the explanatory power of the equation. In this article we aim to clarify its place within modern evolutionary theory. To this end, we first state the basic concepts from which the Price equation can be derived as a theorem. From this axiomatization, (...) we conclude that the Price equation is not explanatory in itself. It merely provides a phenomenological description of evolutionary processes. We argue that its role is analogous to that of Galilean kinematics in classical mechanics. Both the Price equation and Galilean kinematics function as conceptual frameworks that define the basic features of the behavior of a class of systems. Practitioners are encouraged to theorize further on these frameworks to find the possible explanation of this behavior in various specific scenarios. Thus, despite its phenomenological character, the Price equation integrates different fields of evolutionary biology by providing a common formalization of their shared explanandum. (shrink)

The evolution of biparental sexual reproduction in animals and plants is a prominent focus in modern biology. One hundred and fifty years ago, the German biologist Julius Sachs (1832–1897) published the fourth and final edition of his influential _Textbook of Botany_. In the text, he referred to the work of Wilhelm Hofmeister (1824–1877) and proposed that it is possible to reconstruct the origins and evolution of sexuality via systematic comparisons among the life cycles of simple versus complex organisms. Sachs’s 1874 (...) book presented the green alga _Pandorina_ as an example of ancestral life cycles, and that of the land plants as the most complex photosynthetic organisms. Herein, we describe the 150-year-old hypothesis proposed by Sachs and show how the purported “architect of modern plant physiology” provided insights into (1) recent papers implicating the role of HMG-box genes for the expression of male versus female sex determination in complex eukaryotes, such as animals, brown algae, and fungi; and (2) the continuing debate about the meaning of homology in the context of evolution. We conclude that the physiologist Sachs, along with Hofmeister, was also one of the founders of comparative sex research in animals and plants. (shrink)

The eradication of fatness (referred to as “obesity”) is a longtime project of the medical establishment under the guise of health promotion. However, in spite of the large budgets, amount of studies done, and number of interventions tried over the years, the weights of the population still seem to be trending upward. Recent studies and research have been looking into frameworks aimed at combating fatness by reshaping the “obesogenic” environment as an approach that takes into account the social and physical (...) environment and its part in promoting fatness. On its face, this research direction looks as if the discourse is changing from seating the fault of fatness at the feet of the individual and placing it more into the social systems and factors surrounding them. In this paper, I will challenge the continued conversation around “solving” fatness by looking at the role of the environment as a causal factor and will instead highlight the need to focus more on the impacts of a fatphobic environment on the wellness of fat people. (shrink)

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the leadership of the new country carried out a political, cultural, and scientific campaign to “comprehensively learn from the Soviet Union,” with the goal of rapid development on all fronts. In the realm of medicine, this had profound consequences. The hegemonic Soviet theory of physiology and psychology—Pavlovianism—became highly influential in China, first as Party Line and second as the basis for a reformed “traditional Chinese medicine”. In the early 1950s, (...) Pavlov’s theory of higher nervous activity had the status of unquestioned orthodoxy. However, a disagreement between the Ministry of Health and national leader Mao Zedong led to an important shift in 1954. After that date, instead of adopting the Soviet theories wholesale, Chinese medical practitioners used Pavlovianism to shape Chinese medicine’s underlying theoretical constructs. The influence of this reconstruction persists to this day, in practices thought of by the public as thoroughly Chinese, like acupuncture, holistic thinking, inner organs theory, and acupoint injection therapy. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a model-theoretic interpretation of Autonomy Theory as defended by Moreno, Mossio, Montévil and Bich. I address accusations that Autonomy Theory is excessively liberal, such as those made by Garson (2017), arguing that these misunderstand the role of strategic abstractions and generalizations in theory construction. Conceiving of closure of constraints as a model-building effort that emphasizes generality – in the spirit of Levins (1966) – also clarifies its potential for application in empirical contexts.

The Cultural Evolution Society was established in 2015 to “catalyze a theoretical synthesis” in the scientific study of human culture. As a field of research, cultural evolution took shape in the 1970s and 1980s around the aim of incorporating culture into biology’s modern evolutionary synthesis. Cultural evolution grew around the turn of the twenty-first century at the interface of population genetics and cognitive psychology. This article locates the origins of research on cultural evolution in projects of postwar scientific antiracism and (...) U.S.-based debates about race and intelligence in the 1960s. Charting the development of prominent approaches to studying cultural evolution, I show how population geneticists and cognitive psychologists worked to redefine culture in statistical, populational, and geographic terms to politically neutralize the study of human difference. I situate the forms of genetic and cognitive culturalism that emerged as a result in a longer history of twentieth-century scientific antiracism. (shrink)

Big History expands the scope of historiography to study all the past, from the Big Bang to the present. Big History is decidedly non-anthropocentric, recognising that humans appeared only very recently from a much deeper past. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Big History brings together an international cast of leading and emerging scholars from a range of disciplines to provide the first comprehensive and balanced exploration of this new and increasingly significant field. -/- The handbook considers the ways in which Big (...) History broadens the scope of evidence historians use. It reveals how Big History allows for the use of information signals from the past, such as material remains, languages, ancient DNA, and fossils, using recently discovered techniques such as carbon-dating, the extraction of ancient DNA, and the analysis of background radiation from the origin of the universe. -/- Understanding Big History requires an examination of the ontology and epistemology of the past and its scientific inference and representation; chapters on the ontology of the past, historical information, historiographic experiments and predictions, the origin and the end of history, historical counterfactuals, contingency, necessity, and determination and under-determination of the past are included to facilitate this understanding. The handbook also provides a sustained analysis of the theoretical assumptions associated with synthetic historical science: the syntheses of genetics, linguistics, and archaeology to infer human prehistory, quantum physics and cosmology to infer the origin of the universe, and environmental science and biology to infer the history of life; as well as the distinct historical sciences and their methods: cosmology, evolutionary biology, geology, archaeology, historical linguistics, and human historiography. -/- This ground-breaking volume is vital reading for all historians, philosophers and historical scientists interested in becoming more scientifically self-conscious when adopting philosophical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the past. (shrink)

The dominant paradigm in biomedicine focuses on genetically‐specified components of cells and their biochemical dynamics, emphasizing bottom‐up emergence of complexity. Here, I explore the biomedical implications of a complementary emerging field: diverse intelligence. Using tools from behavioral science and multiscale neuroscience, we can study development, regenerative repair, and cancer suppression as behaviors of a collective intelligence of cells navigating the spaces of possible morphologies and transcriptional and physiological states. A focus on the competencies of living material—from molecular to organismal scales—reveals (...) a new landscape for interventions. Such top‐down approaches take advantage of the memories and homeodynamic goal‐seeking behavior of cells and tissues, offering the same massive advantages in biomedicine and bioengineering that reprogrammable hardware has provided information technologies. The bioelectric networks that bind individual cells toward large‐scale anatomical goals are an especially tractable interface to organ‐level plasticity, and tools to modulate them already exist. This suggests a research program to understand and tame the software of life for therapeutic gain by understanding the many examples of basal cognition that operate throughout living bodies. (shrink)

Living systems are complex systems made of components that tend to degrade, but nonetheless they maintain themselves far from equilibrium. This requires living systems to extract energy and materials from the environment and use them to build and repair their parts. They do so by regulating their activities on the basis of their internal and external conditions in ways that allow them to keep living. The philosophical and theoretical approach discussed in this book aims to explain these features of biological (...) systems by appealing to their organization. One of its distinctive features is that it addresses classical and more recent issues in philosophy of biology, from origins and definitions of life to biological teleology and functions, from an original perspective mainly focused on the living system, its physiology and behavior, rather than evolution. The book discusses and revises the conceptual foundations of this approach and presents an updated version of it. (shrink)

Alles entwickelt sich: der Kosmos mit seinen Strukturen, das Leben auf der Erde und die atemberaubend kreative Intelligenz (auch die künstliche) sowie unser Verständnis von alledem. Dieses Buch ist der menschlichen und nichtmenschlichen Natur auf der Spur. Es handelt von Grundsatzfragen der Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie, von Präzisierungen der modernen Naturphilosophie und von vielen weiteren Facetten humanistischer Kultur. Leitidee ist die Einheit des Wissens im Lichte der Evolution. -/- Gerhard Vollmer zählt mit seinen Publikationen (die meisten im Hirzel-Verlag!) zur Erkenntnis- und (...) Wissenschaftstheorie, Naturphilosophie und Metaphysik und über ein evolutionäres, naturalistisches Weltbild zu den bedeutendsten Philosophen der letzten 50 Jahre im deutschsprachigen Raum. Viel beigetragen hat er auch zum interdisziplinären Diskurs und zur Wissenschaftskommunikation – von seinem akademischen Wirken ganz zu schweigen. -/- Autoren und Themen: -/- "Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie bei Schopenhauer - eine Spurensuche" - Prof. Dr. Dieter Birnbacher ist emeritierter Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Düsseldorf. Vizepräsident der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben sowie der Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft, Mitglied der Leopoldina. -/- "Das Realismusproblem in der Evolutionären Erkenntinstheorie" - Florian Chefai ist Direktoriumsmitglied und wissenschaftlicher Koordinator des Hans-Albert-Instituts. Studium der Philosophie und Soziologie in Trier. Seit 2020 Referent für Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit bei der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung. -/- "Evolution und Politik - oder: Wie man Türen öffnet" - Dr. Gerhard Engel ist Philosoph und Evolutionärer Humanist. 1988 Promotion im Fach Wissenschaftslehre bei Hans Albert, danach Lehrtätigkeit in Braunschweig, Mainz und Nordhausen. 2009 bis 2017 war er Präsident der Humanistischen Akademie Bayern. -/- "Auf der Suche nach der Objektivität" - Helmut Fink ist Theoretischer Physiker und Referent für Wissenschaft und Philosophie bei Kortizes – Institut für populärwissenschaftlichen Diskurs in Nürnberg. Seit 2013 Vorstandsmitglied der Heisenberg-Gesellschaft, seit 2017 Vorsitzender der Ludwig-Feuerbach-Gesellschaft. -/- "Materie und Emergenz - ein wirkungsvolles Duo" - Prof. Dr. Ernst Peter Fischer ist Wissenschaftshistoriker und -publizist. 1977 Promotion in Biologie bei Max Delbrück, 1987 Habilitation in Wissenschaftsgeschichte, danach Lehrtätigkeit in Konstanz und Heidelberg. -/- "Die Evolution als Ideengeber für eine Systematische Kreativität" - PD Dr. Dr. Ulrich Frey ist Philosoph und Ökologe. 2006 Promotion in Philosophie bei Gerhard Vollmer, 2016 Promotion zum Dr. rer. nat. bei Eckart Voland, 2017 Habilitation in Ökologie in Gießen. Forscher am Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt in Stuttgart. -/- "Die Dynamik der Ignoranz in den Wissenschaften" - Prof. Dr. Paul Hoyningen-Huene ist promovierter Theoretischer Physiker, pensionierter Professor für Theoretische Philosophie an der Leibniz Universität Hannover und Lehrbeauftragter für Wirtschaftsphilosophie an der Universität Zürich. Mitglied der Leopoldina. "KI: Neues Denkzeug oder Evolutionssprung?" - Prof. Dr. Hartmut Kliemt ist emeritierter Professor für Philosophie und Ökonomik an der Frankfurt School of Finance and Management und Gastprofessor für Verhaltens- und Institutionenökonomik an der Universität Gießen. -/- "Warum manche Warum-Fragen immer wieder neu beantwortet werden" - Prof. Dr. Meinard Kuhlmann ist Wissenschaftsphilosoph im Philosophischen Seminar und im Studium Generale der Universität Mainz. 2012 bis 2021 Sprecher der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Philosophie der Physik der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. -/- "Sind die sogenannten 'Critical Studies' Kandidaten für Pseudowissenschaften?" - Dr. Martin Mahner ist Biologe und Wissenschaftstheoretiker. Von 1999 bis 2024 leitete er das Zentrum für Wissenschaft und kritisches Denken der Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) in Roßdorf bei Darmstadt. -/- "Das Realismusproblem in der Evolutionären Erkenntnistheorie" - Dr. Jonas Pöld ist Direktoriumsmitglied des Hans-Albert-Instituts. Studium der Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Literaturwissenschaft in Berlin und Münster. 2024 Promotion in Philosophie in Münster. -/- "Im Lichte der Evolution: Kultur" - Dr. Dr. Hannes Rusch ist Verhaltensökonom. Promotionen 2014 in Biologie in Gießen und 2020 in Ökonomik in München. Seit 2023 Forschungsgruppenleiter am Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Kriminalität, Sicherheit und Recht in Freiburg. -/- "Nietzsche und die Wissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts" - Prof. Dr. Claus-Artur Scheier ist emeritierter Professor für Philosophie an der Technischen Universität Braunschweig. Arbeitsgebiete vor allem Metaphysik, Ästhetik und Deutscher Idealismus. Mitglied der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft. -/- "Auf Epikurus Schultern - eine kurze Geschichte des Naturalismus" - Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Schmidt-Salomon ist Philosoph, Schriftsteller und Vorstandssprecher der Giordano-Bruno-Stiftung für Humanismus und Aufklärung. 1997 Promotion zum Dr. phil. in Trier, 2019 Dr. h.c. der TU Liberec (Reichenberg). -/- "»Spiegel«-Leser wissen mehr – Reflexionen über Evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie" - Prof. Dr. Volker Sommer ist Primatologe und Anthropologe. Seit 1996 Professor für Evolutionäre Anthropologie am University College London. Er erforscht Ökologie und Verhalten wild lebender Primaten in Afrika und Asien. -/- "Warum manche Warum-Fragen immer wieder neu beantwortet werden" - Prof. Dr. Manfred Stöckler ist Theoretischer Physiker und Philosoph. 1981 Promotion zum Dr. phil. in Gießen. 1991 bis 2017 Professor für Theoretische Philosophie mit dem Schwerpunkt Naturphilosophie und Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften an der Universität Bremen. -/- "Gerhard Vollmer als Philosophiedidaktiker – vom Lernen auf Vorrat, einer immer noch nötigen Fragekultur und dem Wert guter Beispiele" - Dr. Thomas Sukopp ist Akademischer Rat am Philosophischen Seminar, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Philosophiedidaktik, der Universität Siegen. 2006 Promotion in Philosophie bei Gerhard Vollmer, danach Lehrtätigkeit unter anderem in Braunschweig, Bamberg und Augsburg, seit 2012 in Siegen. -/- "Die Evolution des Kosmos - Zufall und Notwendigkeit im Multiversum" - Rüdiger Vaas ist Philosoph, Publizist, Astronomie- und Physikredakteur des Monatsmagazins bild der wissenschaft. Mitherausgeber mehrerer Buchreihen. Arbeitsgebiete vorwiegend Naturphilosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie der Grundlagenphysik und Kosmologie. -/- "Im Lichte der Evolution: Kultur" - Prof. Dr. Eckart Voland ist emeritierter Professor für Philosophie der Biowissenschaften an der Universität Gießen. Forschungen und Publikationen über Soziobiologie, zur historischen Demographie und evolutionären Anthropologie. -/- "Nikolaus Kopernikus - der missverstandene Astronom" - Prof. Dr. Franz Josef Wetz ist Philosoph und lehrte 1994 bis 2024 an der Pädagogischen Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd. 1981 bis 1993 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Zentrum für Philosophie und Grundlagen der Wissenschaft der Universität Gießen. (shrink)

This essay looks at electromagnet rays and their role in visual perception. It is an update of the earlier version, of similar title.

The rapid rise of generative AI, including LLMs, has prompted a great deal of concern, both within and beyond academia. One of these concerns is that generative models embed, reproduce, and therein potentially perpetuate all manner of bias. The present study offers an alternative perspective: exploring the potential of LLMs to detect bias in human generated text. Our target is genetic essentialism in obesity discourse in Australian print media. We develop and deploy an LLM-based classification model to evaluate a large (...) sample of relevant articles (n=26,163). We show that our model detects genetic essentialist biases as reliably as human experts; and find that, while genes figure less prominently in popular discussions of obesity than previous work might suggest, when genetic information is invoked, it is often presented in a biased way. Implications for future work are discussed. (shrink)

This article defends a selective eliminativist position with respect to the concept of “biological lineage” as used in certain areas of contemporary evolutionary biology. We argue that its primary epistemic roles in these contexts—explaining social evolution and cumulative selection—clash with empirical evidence, and that enforcing the concept of “lineage” even obstructs fruitful research avenues in several biological research fields, including phylogenetic research. Drawing on this, we suggest that, in many instances, it would be best to get rid of the concept (...) of “lineage” and think in terms that are more closely aligned with the empirical complexity of the biological world. Specifically, this entails that, instead of looking for the lineage that may have given rise to the entities possessing certain biological characteristics, biologists should generally look for any potential process allowing such possession, with the formation of a lineage just one possibility among many. (shrink)

This paper challenges “biodiversity skepticism:” an inferential move that acknowledges the proliferation, heterogeneity, and lack of covariance of biodiversity measurements, and concludes that we should doubt the scientific validity of the biodiversity concept. As a way out of skepticism, philosophers have advocated for eliminating “biodiversity” from scientific inquiry, revising it, or deflating its meaning into a single measurable dimension. I present a counterargument to the inferential move of the skeptic by revealing how it stands on two unstated premises, namely a (...) reflective view of measurements and the unidirectional dynamics between definitional and measurement practices, and corollary assumptions. These premises and assumptions are misaligned with a richer theoretical understanding of measurement and are sometimes inconsistent with how science operates. A more nuanced view of measurement could better explain measurement proliferation while being consistent with new ways in which the general biodiversity concept could be useful. To conclude, I urge philosophers of measurement and conceptual engineers to collaborate in tackling the interplay between conceptual change and measurement practices. (shrink)

I propose a version of teleosemantics for simple animal representations that combines Millikan’s suggestion that they represent the most crucial “normal conditions” required for them to bring about their beneficial behavioral effects with Neander’s suggestion that they represent their “normal causes”. The content of a simple representation is the most crucial among the normal conditions responsible for its tokens having beneficial behavioral effects that also causes such tokens. I argue that this version delivers more plausible contents than other versions of (...) teleosemantics. Frogs’ prey detectors represent the animals they prey on rather than nutritious or small moving things. (shrink)

Shared intentionality is key for understanding human cooperation and cognition. This paper proposes a new way of looking at shared intentionality as a set of interconnected threshold traits, highlighting the role of developmental niche construction in its evolution. This perspective suggests that shared intentionality may have arisen from environmental changes and interactions influencing existing traits, rather than genetic variation for novel cognitive machinery.

In 1899, the first cases of plague were recognised in Paraguay and a few months later in Buenos Aires as part of the third plague pandemic. In the first decades of the twentieth century, plague slowly advanced towards the Argentinian hinterland. In this paper we focus on the production of scientific knowledge about plague in Argentina, where a core of bacteriologists emerged early on. We show how they not only played a central role in the complex process of plague recognition (...) and intervention, but also influenced the scientific development of bacteriology in Argentina and potentially in South America. We argue that bacteriology became a key tool in articulating the promises of modern science with political and economic interests, allowing the Argentinian government to extend its territorial control over Buenos Aires and the hinterland. This can be seen in two different configurations of the plague as an epistemic and political object in Argentina. In the first period, from 1899 to 1910, plague was a problem linked to the ports. In this section of the article, we show how plague became an important issue in the development of bacteriology in Argentina, how this research contributed to new intervention measures and, in some cases, developed innovative ideas about serotherapeutic treatments and the characteristics of the disease. In the second period, from the mid-1910s until the 1940s, research in Argentina provided new evidence of the ‘rural’ nature of plague, a process in deep dialogue with research on plague among peri-domestic and wild rodents carried out in other parts of the Americas, Europe and Africa. This article thus aims to contribute to a history of bacteriology that highlights the role of non-European centres, like Argentina, in the production and circulation of bacteriological knowledge. (shrink)

We present a case study of two scientific perspectives on the phenomenon of nerve signal propagation, a bio-electric and a thermodynamic perspective, and compare this case with two accounts of scientific perspectivism: those of Michela Massimi and Juha Saatsi, respectively. We demonstrate that the interaction between the bio-electric perspective and the thermodynamic perspective can be captured in Saatsi’s terms of progress in explanatory understanding. Using insights from our case study, we argue that both the epistemic and pragmatic dimensions of scientific (...) understanding are important for increasing explanatory understanding of phenomena. The epistemic dimension of understanding is important for increasing the number of actually answered what-if-things-had-been-different questions about a phenomenon, the pragmatic dimension for pointing out the potentially answerable what-if questions that have been overlooked or purposefully neglected thus far. Exposing the limitations of the acquired understanding within a particular perspective can be achieved by criticizing the assumptions that have been adopted to make models of the perspective intelligible, but that are considered problematic from a rival perspective. (shrink)