Elizabeth Grosz's interpretation of Darwinian evolutionary theory to ground a feminist ontology of biology has been particularly controversial. Most critics have understood Grosz as supporting her theory with empirical evidence, and they criticize her for being either inaccurate or uncritical of and overly dependent on science. I argue that Grosz reads Darwin as a philosopher in a Deleuzian and Irigarayan sense, and that Grosz's project is therefore better understood in terms of its ethical and political goals rather than in terms (...) of empirical adequacy. Employing this evaluative framework leads to a novel route for critique of Grosz's ontology in terms of its reliance on the Darwinian distinction between organism and environment. I conclude that Grosz's work is valuable for the way it maintains ethical and political considerations in feminist ontological debates, and that introducing a more sensitive understanding of the organism–environment relation will lead us closer to a truly feminist ontology of biology. (shrink)

The philosophical problem of personal identity has been widely discussed in contemporary analytic philosophy. The disputes over identity throughout time abound in references to thought experiments, excluding any connection to practical problems or to scientific knowledge and biotechnological practices. Nevertheless, some real cases challenge the pure metaphysical formulation of the problem and also show how science has an indubitable impact on the issue of identity. I will discuss the case of approximately 500 children who were appropriated during the most recent (...) Argentinian dictatorship (1976–1983), as well as their restitution thanks to Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo’s fight and certain genetics outcomes. I will examine an alleged notion of genetic identity thought to have stemmed from the restitution phenomenon; and I will argue against some criticisms to that notion departing from contemporary philosophy of biology and philosophy of science. Particularly, I will discuss if a genetic stance of personal individual identity can be considered as supported by contemporary biological knowledge; and if a pluralistic perspective on scientific practice that appraises the role of values allows us to maintain the reference to DNA regarding identity but overcoming aforementioned criticisms. (shrink)

This paper critiques the rise of scientific approaches to central questions in the humanities, specifically questions about human nature, ethics, identity, and experience. In particular, I look at how an increasing number of philosophers are turning to evolutionary psychology and neuroscience as sources of answers to philosophical problems. This approach constitutes what I term a biological turn in the humanities. I argue that the biological turn, especially its reliance on evolutionary psychology, is best understood as an (...) epistemology of ignorance that contributes to a climate of hostility and intolerance regarding feminist insights about gender, identity, and the body. (shrink)

Este artigo tem quatro objetivos. O primeiro deles é mostrar que dois debates contemporâneos de grande importância para a filosofia política aristotélica – a saber, o debate acerca do laço que liga ou deve ligar os cidadãos de uma comunidade política e o debate acerca da importância da participação política no que diz respeito ao alcance da felicidade – devem ser compreendidos em conjunto com o movimento hermenêutico que chamamos hoje de biological turn. Como veremos, a maneira como (...) respondemos a essas duas questões influencia ainda uma terceira, a saber, a questão acerca da importância e da função da lei para a comunidade política tal como pensada por Aristóteles. O segundo objetivo é resumir os principais argumentos apresentados nos ditos debates apontando sua pertinência e as suas falhas. O terceiro objetivo é ressaltar um ponto de considerável importância para ambos os debates que não recebeu a devida atenção por parte dos comentadores. Sendo impossível alcançar uma resposta definitiva a respeito das duas questões no espaço que temos aqui, o último objetivo do presente artigo é indicar um possível caminho para futuras investigações. (shrink)

This article investigates how the turn to affect within the humanities and social sciences re-imagines the relationship between cultural theory and science. We focus on how the writings of two neuroscientists (Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux) and one developmental psychologist (Daniel Stern) are used in order to ground certain claims about affect within cultural theory. We examine the motifs at play in cultural theories of affect, the models of (neuro)biology with which they work, and some fascinating missteps characterizing the (...) taking up of scientific literature. While neuroscience frames the affective as part of a system of regulation that makes both self and social coherence possible, in cultural theory’s narratives, by contrast, affectivity becomes a placeholder for the inherent dynamism and mutability of matter. The article interrogates the consequences of cultural theory’s strange borrowings from neuroscience and developmental psychology in their institution of a model of subjectivity preoccupied with a lived present in excess of the hold of habit and embodied history. (shrink)

This article focuses on three scenarios in which residual biological materials are turned into research collections during the procedure of procuring these materials for diagnostic, therapeutic or other non-research purposes. These three scenarios differ from each other primarily because they employ different models of consent: (a) precautionary consent, which may be secured during the collecting procedure; (b) the presumed consent model, which may be applied during the collection of materials; and (c) consent for research use of identifiable human (...) class='Hi'>biological materials, which may be skipped entirely. These scenarios offer additional sources of biological samples for research purposes and at the same time seem to offer even more flexibility in terms of stringency of consent as compared with the more traditional models of broad consent in prospective research collections and the waiver of consent in retrospective research. Our discussion leads us to think that precautionary consent is preferable to presumed consent and no consent when handling issues of consent in the use of residual human biological materials for research. However, such precautionary consent should not be construed as blanket, unrestricted consent for any future use. (shrink)

The Darwinian revolution supposed and imposed a much broader and more complex concept of environment than that which, until that moment, had been considered by most as part of natural history. Until Darwin, the environment of living beings had been regarded, almost exclusively, as the inanimate surroundings. This pre-Darwinian notion of environment included physicochemical and climatic variables: the living beings themselves were scarcely considered, or they were regarded just as food to be assimilated. In contrast, with Darwin, the influence of (...) living surroundings began to be regarded as having decisive importance for understanding the distribution, configuration, and viability of living beings. The relationships established among different living beings became the main and more significant features of the biological environment. This conceptual change was an exigency derived from the formulation and justification of the theory of natural selection. The idea of struggle for existence supposed by that theory requires that the biotic environment be considered critical in determining the viability of each living being. (shrink)

This article argues that feminist theorists should conceive of the life sciences not only as a factual resource but also as a figural resource. It proposes that in shifting our conceptual orientation to biological science from fact to figure, feminists will be able to give theoretical life to scientific findings about the ways in which social environments and material habitats are processes integral to our development, growth, and social and political well-being. The figuration of ourselves as specifically biocultural creatures (...) will enable feminists to gain a stronger theoretical and analytic purchase on the ongoing mutual shaping of the biological and social dimensions of existence. This, in turn, will enable feminists to creatively re-imagine the fields and fora of feminist politics. (shrink)

A cluster of similar trends emerging in separate fields of science and philosophy points to new opportunities to apply biosemiotic ideas as tools for conceptual integration in theoretical biology. I characterize these developments as the outcome of a “relational turn” in these disciplines. They signal a shift of attention away from objects and things and towards relational structures and processes. Increasingly sophisticated research technologies of molecular biology have generated an enormous quantity of experimental data, sparking a need for relational (...) approaches that could help to find recurrent patterns in the mass of data. Earlier conceptions of relational biology and cybernetics, once deemed too abstract and speculative, are now resurrected and applied by means of new computational and simulation tools. I think this receptivity should be extended to incorporate nets of semiotic relations as heuristic guides for discerning global patterns of interactions in living systems. In this article I review aspects of systems biology and new directions in evolutionary theory, focusing on the role of circular and downward causation in relational structures and dynamical networks. I also indicate promising avenues of integration of some ideas of biosemiotics with those emerging from these new currents in biology. Relational developments in biology bear a telling similarity to a parallel relational turn presently manifest in the philosophy of science, rooted in the philosophy of physics and mathematics and in different varieties of structural and informational realism. The recognition of the relational nature of reality within these disciplines entails a tacit repudiation of nominalistic biases in science that have hindered the reception of semitiotic conceptions in biology. In previous investigations I explored connections between two kinds of relational structures: the networks of self-referential circular loops that appear pervasively in living systems, and the triadic relational structures that Peircean semiotics places at the basis of all semiotic transactions. Current relational views in the sciences seem oblivious to the difference between dyadic and triadic relations. Incorporating this essential distinction from biosemiotics into other fields could be a first step in seizing the opportunities opened by the relational turn for a renewal of biology and of natural philosophy in general, across disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...) Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

As a discipline distinct from ecology, conservation biology emerged in the 1980s as a rigorous science focused on protecting biodiversity. Two algorithmic breakthroughs in information processing made this possible: place-prioritization algorithms and geographical information systems. They provided defensible, data-driven methods for designing reserves to conserve biodiversity that obviated the need for largely intuitive and highly problematic appeals to ecological theory at the time. But the scientific basis of these achievements and whether they constitute genuine scientific progress has been criticized. We (...) counter by pointing out important inaccuracies about the science and rejecting the apparent theory-first focus. More broadly, the case study reveals significant limitations of the predominant epistemic-semantic conceptions of scientific progress and the considerable merits of pragmatic, practically-oriented accounts. (shrink)

A review of: Günther Witzany: Life: The communicative structure. A new philosophy of biology. Norderstedt: Libri Books on Demand, 2000.

ABSTRACT: Biological prospecting is being undertaken in the Antarctic and, as novel material starts to yield significantly higher commercial rewards, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties might decide to regulate it through the Antarctic Treaty System. This will be problematic since activities are already being undertaken, patents have been filed and products developed. Furthermore, there are differing perceptions of the status of the Antarctic, with some considering it global commons and others considering it the common heritage of mankind. These 2 (...) doctrines can be inferred from the rhetoric of the Treaty and its subsequent legal instruments through which human activities, including the use of resources, are managed. However, the Antarctic Treaty System does not support either in practice because activities such as fishing and bioprospecting already return an exclusive reward for effort, with no benefit-sharing arrangements. Under the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, the Parties determine allowable catches for a fishery based on scientific assessment, and this may discharge them from providing access and benefit-sharing arrangements to the international community potentially available through other international law (e.g. the Law of the Sea Convention or the Convention on Biological Diversity). The major turning point in Antarctica came when the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities—which acknowledged the rights of the international community—failed to enter into force. Today the international community is rewarded with a relatively healthy Antarctic environment and free access to some scientific information, which are benefiting all mankind. But the international community does not get direct financial reward from Antarctic activities because access is constrained by law and by a lack of capacity. There is no mechanism for disbursing compensation to all mankind in any case, although the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties could certainly rectify this if they had the will to do so. So far they have not. (shrink)

Biological modalities, i.e., biologically possible, impossible, or necessary states of affairs have not received much attention from philosophers. Yet, it is widely agreed that there are biological constraints on physically possible states of affairs, such that not everything that is physically possible is also biologically possible, even if everything that is biologically possible is also physically possible. Furthermore, biologists use concepts that appear to be modal in nature, such as the concept of evolvability in evolutionary developmental biology, or (...) “evo-devo.” The present chapter investigates what kind of modality underlies the concept of evolvability. This concept tries to capture the capacity of an organism or a lineage to sustain genetic changes that enable it to evolve or to evolve adaptively. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to construe evolvability as a kind of accessibility in a modal space. The difficult part is to specify this modal space and the relevant accessibility relation. While there may not be a general way of defining such a relation, there exist model systems for which it is possible, e.g., evolving small RNAs. The modal space in such cases turns out to be quite distinct from those constructed by philosophers, e.g., David Lewis’s similarity metric for possible worlds. Even though the biological case examined here is quite special, attending to the way in which biological possibilities are modeled in this case harbors some general lessons about biological modalities, in particular their dependence on the explanatory goals of the models modeling modality. (shrink)

“Biological Naturalism” is a name I have given to an approach to what is traditionally called the mind-body problem. The way I arrived at it is typical of the way I work: try to forget about the philosophical history of a problem and remind yourself of what you know for a fact. Any philosophical theory has to be consistent with the facts. Of course, something we think is a fact may turn out not to be, but we have (...) to start with our best information. Biological Naturalism is a theory of mental states in general but as this book is about consciousness I will present it here as a theory of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper seeks to characterize how the study of nutrition processes contributed to revisit the problem of vital organization in the late eighteenth century. It argues that focusing on nutrition leads to reformulate the problem of the relation between life and organization in terms of processes, rather than static or given structures. This nutrition-centered approach to life amounts to acknowledge the specific strategic role nutrition played in the development of a materialist approach to the generation of vital organization. The paper (...) proposes a clarification of the multiple meanings of the concept of organization in the context of Enlightenment physiology and nascent biology, before focusing on the century long analogy between nutrition and generation. It shows how, by contrasting different uses of this analogy, nutrition was employed as a key vital phenomenon in the development of epigenetic theories of generation, i.e. how a nutritive modeling of generation was used in the undermining of preformationism. To this purpose I contrast two seemingly opposite theories of generation, Buffon’s and Bonnet’s, and show that despite the obvious metaphysical discontent, their views of generation share a common mechanical conceptual frame in which nutrition is conflated with growth and repair. I then turn to the role nutrition played in the epigenetic conception of generation in C. F. Wolff’s embryology and analyze this rival understanding of nutrition as an organizing process. (shrink)

This paper argues that biological organisation can be legitimately conceived of as an intrinsically teleological causal regime. The core of the argument consists in establishing a connection between organisation and teleology through the concept of self-determination: biological organisation determines itself in the sense that the effects of its activity contribute to determine its own conditions of existence. We suggest that not any kind of circular regime realises self-determination, which should be specifically understood as self-constraint: in biological systems, (...) in particular, self-constraint takes the form of closure, i.e. a network of mutually dependent constitutive constraints. We then explore the occurrence of intrinsic teleology in the biological domain and beyond. On the one hand, the organisational account might possibly concede that supra-organismal biological systems could realise closure, and hence be teleological. On the other hand, the realisation of closure beyond the biological realm appears to be highly unlikely. In turn, the occurrence of simpler forms of self-determination remains a controversial issue, in particular with respect to the case of self-organising dissipative systems. (shrink)

CELL AND PSYCHE THE BIOLOGY OF PURPOSE By EDMUND W. SINNOTT. PREFACE TO THE TORCHBOOK EDITION: SINCE the publication of this little book, as the McNair Lectures at the University of North Carolina, the author has written two others, as well as a number of papers, on the same gen eral theme. Though these elaborate the argument a little further, the essence of it is in Cell and Psyche. This is admittedly a specula tion, but one based solidly on (...) class='Hi'>biological fact. It has been regarded as rather visionary and metaphysical by some people, but others have been attracted to it by the suggestion it offers for a better understanding of the ancient problem of how mind and body are related to each other. This problem is of such paramount impor tance, not only for a knowledge of what man really is but for the construction of a satisfying life philosophy, that any light thrown on it should be welcome. The suggestion that man's physical life grows out of the basic goal-seeking and purposiveness found in all organic behavior and that this, in turn, is an aspect of the more general self - regulating and normative character evident in the development and activities of living organisms, is at least worth serious consideration. If we are to avoid a dualistic idea of man's nature and to construct a true monism that does not require the sacrifice of the significance of either mind or body, some such conception as this seems a rea sonable means of doing so. It is to be hoped that the wider distri bution now made possible for the present book may result in a more general consideration of this particular relationship between biol ogy and philosophy* E. W. S. CONTENTS: Introduction. i I. Organization, the Distinctive Character of All Life 15 II. Biological Organization and Psychological Activity 43 IIL Some Implications for Philosophy 75 Suggested Readings. 112 Index. 117. INTRODUCTION: IN THE CLAMOR and confusion of our times one fact grows ever clearer beliefs are important. One of the major problems with which men now are faced per haps, indeed, the most important one is the wide dis agreement which still exists in their fundamental philos ophies. What course a man will follow, or a nation, is set in no small measure by his basic creed, by what he really thinks about the true nature of a human being his personality, his freedom, his destiny, his relations to others and to the rest of the universe; by the judgments lie makes as to what qualities and courses of action are admirable and should command his allegiance. These are not academic questions merely. They arc ancient mys teries which long have troubled human hearts and seem today almost as far as ever from solution. The answer a ny* n gives to them is the most significant thing that one can know about him. We may be tempted to under estimate the importance of these inner directives and turn instead to outer influences, to economic and social factors, as more decisive for our actions. But when we look at what the philosophy of Marx has done to set one half the world against the other, at the basic divergence between the thinking of East and West, and at so many other differences in political and religious beliefs which now divide mankind, we can hardly doubt the profound practical import of men's philosophies. It is still true today that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. In the minds of men are the most fateful battles fought. Against those ideologies we condemn, force in the end will fail. If our opponents cannot be convinced, or their ideas reconci. (shrink)

A common account sees the human genome sequencing project of the 1990s as a “natural outgrowth” of the deciphering of the double helical structure of DNA in the 1950s. The essay aims to complicate this neat narrative by putting the spotlight on the field of human chromosome research that flourished at the same time as molecular biology. It suggests that we need to consider both endeavors – the human cytogeneticists who collected samples and looked down the microscope and the molecular (...) biologists who probed the molecular mechanisms of gene function – to understand the rise of the human genome sequencing project and the current genomic practices. In particular, it proposes that what has often been described as the “molecularization” of cytogenetics could equally well be viewed as the turn of molecular biologists to human and medical genetics – a field long occupied by cytogeneticists. These considerations also have implications for the archives that are constructed for future historians and policy makers. (shrink)

An inspection into the contemporary theory of knowledge shows that a new methodological stance, that is, the so called evolutionary epistemology or, equivalently, evolutionary theory of knowledge, which is a version of “naturalistic” turn has been established. This stance tends to consider various philosophical problems from concrete scientific positions and by means of scientific knowledge. This interdisciplinary enterprise has determined as its purposes the researches of biological preconditions of human knowledge and the explanation of its features on the (...) basis of the modern synthetic theory of evolution.The paper discusses the ideas of K. Lorenz, G. Vollmer, D.T. Campbell, H.R. Maturana, F.J. Varela. Especially, the paper concerns the thesis that the reality cognizable by man is the reality designed, created during his personally involved communicative activity. In this perspective, the question “What is the object of knowledge?” becomes inappropriate. The reliability of knowledge consists in being able to behave adequately in individual enterprising and in co-operation with other subjects. (shrink)

Synthetic biology presents a challenge to traditional accounts of biology: Whereas traditional biology emphasizes the evolvability, variability, and heterogeneity of living organisms, synthetic biology envisions a future of homogeneous, humanly engineered biological systems that may be combined in modular fashion. The present paper approaches this challenge from the perspective of the epistemology of technoscience. In particular, it is argued that synthetic-biological artifacts lend themselves to an analysis in terms of what has been called ‘thing knowledge’. As such, they (...) should neither be regarded as the simple outcome of applying theoretical knowledge and engineering principles to specific technological problems, nor should they be treated as mere sources of new evidence in the general pursuit of scientific understanding. Instead, synthetic-biological artifacts should be viewed as partly autonomous research objects which, qua their material-biological constitution, embody knowledge about the natural world—knowledge that, in turn, can be accessed via continuous experimental interrogation. (shrink)

Social scientific and humanistic research on synthetic biology has focused quite narrowly on questions of epistemology and ELSI. I suggest that to understand this discipline in its full scope, researchers must turn to the objects of the field—synthetic biological artifacts—and study them as the objects in the making of a science yet to be made. I consider one fundamentally important question: how should we understand the material products of synthetic biology? Practitioners in the field, employing a consistent technological (...) optic in the study and construction of biological systems, routinely employ the mantra ‘biology is technology’. I explore this categorization. By employing an established definition of technological artifects drawn from the philosophy of technology, I explore the appropriateness of attributing to synthetic biological artifacts the four criteria of materiality, intentional design, functionality, and normativity. I then explore a variety of accounts of natural kinds. I demonstrate that synthetic biological artifacts fit each kind imperfectly, and display a concomitant ontological ‘messiness’. I argue that this classificatory ambivalence is a product of the field’s own nascence, and posit that further work on kinds might help synthetic biology evaluate its existing commitments and practices. (shrink)

Epigenetics is currently one of the fastest-growing fields in the sciences. Epigenetic information not only controls DNA expression but links genetic factors with the environmental experiences that influence the traits and characteristics of an individual. What we eat, where we work, and how we live affects not only the activity of our genes but that of our offspring as well. This discovery has imposed a revolutionary theoretical shift on modern biology, especially on evolutionary theory. It has helped to uncover the (...) developmental processes leading to cancer, obesity, schizophrenia, alcoholism, and aging, and to facilitate associated medial applications such as stem cell therapy and cloning. Above the Gene, Beyond Biology explores how biologists in this booming field investigate and explain living systems. Jan Baedke offers the first comprehensive philosophical discussion of epigenetic concepts, explanations, and methodologies so that we can better understand this "epigenetic turn" in the life sciences from a philosophical perspective. (shrink)

Integrative systems biology is an emerging field that attempts to integrate computation, applied mathematics, engineering concepts and methods, and biological experimentation in order to model large-scale complex biochemical networks. The field is thus an important contemporary instance of an interdisciplinary approach to solving complex problems. Interdisciplinary science is a recent topic in the philosophy of science. Determining what is philosophically important and distinct about interdisciplinary practices requires detailed accounts of problem-solving practices that attempt to understand how specific practices address (...) the challenges and constraints of interdisciplinary research in different contexts. In this paper we draw from our 5-year empirical ethnographic study of two systems biology labs and their collaborations with experimental biologists to analyze a significant problem-solving approach in ISB, which we call adaptive problem solving. ISB lacks much of the methodological and theoretical resources usually found in disciplines in the natural sciences, such as methodological frameworks that prescribe reliable model-building processes. Researchers in our labs compensate for the lack of these and for the complexity of their problems by using a range of heuristics and experimenting with multiple methods and concepts from the background fields available to them. Using these resources researchers search out good techniques and practices for transforming intractable problems into potentially solvable ones. The relative freedom lab directors grant their researchers to explore methodological options and find good practices that suit their problems is not only a response to the complex interdisciplinary nature of the specific problem, but also provides the field itself with an opportunity to discover more general methodological approaches and develop theories of biological systems. Such developments in turn can help to establish the field as an identifiably distinct and successful approach to understanding biological systems. (shrink)

A common account sees the human genome sequencing project of the 1990s as a “natural outgrowth” of the deciphering of the double helical structure of DNA in the 1950s. The essay aims to complicate this neat narrative by putting the spotlight on the field of human chromosome research that flourished at the same time as molecular biology. It suggests that we need to consider both endeavors – the human cytogeneticists who collected samples and looked down the microscope and the molecular (...) biologists who probed the molecular mechanisms of gene function – to understand the rise of the human genome sequencing project and the current genomic practices. In particular, it proposes that what has often been described as the “molecularization” of cytogenetics could equally well be viewed as the turn of molecular biologists to human and medical genetics – a field long occupied by cytogeneticists. These considerations also have implications for the archives that are constructed for future historians and policy makers. (shrink)

I taught for 8 years at a moderate evangelical liberal arts college. At one faculty meeting the topic turned to the challenge of dealing with controversial topics in the classroom, a pressing question given that many of our students came from extremely conservative backgrounds. One faculty member commented that he and his colleagues in the sciences avoided problems by never using the word “evolution” in the classroom. A number of us from the humanities immediately expressed shock and dismay. In response, (...) our colleague reassured us that science faculty were indeed teaching evolution, but they had learned they could be spared student resistance and parental phone calls by replacing the word “evolution” with “development.”I was reminded of this while reading Adam Shapiro’s fine book, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Central to Trying Biology is the argument that the Scopes Trial was not the inevitable result of an eternal con .. (shrink)

The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribute to the maintenance of the same organization which produces them. To face this ‘ontological problem’, a splitting account has been proposed, according to which the two kinds (...) of functions require distinct organizational definitions. In this article, we propose a solution for the ontological problem, by arguing that intra- and cross-generation functions can be said to contribute in the same way to the maintenance of the biological organization, characterized in terms of organizational self-maintenance. As a consequence, we suggest maintaining a unified organizational account of biological functions. (shrink)

The difficulties of the biological taxonomy development are argued to have been historically associated with two main problems: 1) the problem of searching for essential features which was unachievable within the framework of empiric taxonomy andcould be solved as a part of the mature theory; 2) the problem of developing of a model of the biological object the remedies of which were developed only in the XX century. The author argues that both problems are associated with the development (...) of classificatory and system ontology and the relevant methodologies. The classificatory methodology from its inception is argued to have developed as a means of classification of biological diversity; furthermore it is claimed to have been assumed that the features representing classes possessed ontological nature that is they actually represent individual objects. The author concludes that taking into account the empiric nature of taxonomy that assumption turned to be false. In the modern taxonomy along with the classical approach a classificatory-system approach was developed. Fundamentally, it is a transition from the classical approach to the modern one which is held to imply the development of a system model of the study subject. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology is put forward by its defenders as an extension of evolutionary biology, bringing psychology within the integrated causal chain of the hard sciences. It is extolled as a new paradigm for integrating psychology with the rest of science. We argue that such claims misrepresent the methods and explanations of evolutionary biology, and present a distorted view of the consequences that might be drawn from evolutionary biology for views of human nature. General theses about adaptation in biology are empty (...) schemata, not laws of nature allowing the subsumption of mind under biology. Functional thinking is an indispensable tool for psychology, mostly of value in abstractive unification and as a heuristic, but it gains little from association with evolutionary notions of selection. Thus, we argue, the cherished integrative causal model evaporates, and evolutionary phraseology serves no more than rhetorical purposes. Moreover, the universality of human nature and the evolutionary irrelevance of individual variation are presented as biological truths that psychologists should respect in their approach to mind. On closer inspection, this turns out to be rather dubious biology. Psychology might conceivably be better off as a continuation of biology by different means, but evolutionary psychology does not provide the conceptual integration leading to such a happy union. (shrink)

A common account sees the human genome sequencing project of the 1990s as a “natural outgrowth” of the deciphering of the double helical structure of DNA in the 1950s. The essay aims to complicate this neat narrative by putting the spotlight on the field of human chromosome research that flourished at the same time as molecular biology. It suggests that we need to consider both endeavors – the human cytogeneticists who collected samples and looked down the microscope and the molecular (...) biologists who probed the molecular mechanisms of gene function – to understand the rise of the human genome sequencing project and the current genomic practices. In particular, it proposes that what has often been described as the “molecularization” of cytogenetics could equally well be viewed as the turn of molecular biologists to human and medical genetics – a field long occupied by cytogeneticists. These considerations also have implications for the archives that are constructed for future historians and policy makers. (shrink)

As an incapacitated patient is unable to make decisions regarding their care, physicians turn to next-of-kin when appointing a surrogate decision-maker in the absence of an advanced directive. With the increasing complexity of modern families, physicians are facing new ethical dilemmas when choosing the individual to make end-of-life decisions for their patients. Legal definitions and hierarchies are no longer adhering to the purpose of a surrogate-decision maker, which is to maintain a patient’s autonomy. Moral criteria for surrogates, which emphasize (...) the importance of making decisions that align with the patient’s desires and wishes and negate biological relationships over emotional connections, are becoming much more important. This paper explores a case study in which physicians must appoint a surrogate decision-maker for an incapacitated patient, forced to choose between a biological relationship and a strong emotional connection. (shrink)

During the eighteenth century, the specter of atheism was a major concern among many intellectuals in Europe. Many of the leading figures of the period such as François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire refuted atheism at every turn. These debates centered on living organisms, particularly questions about generation. Efforts to explain the process of generation raised biological, religious, and political questions. One popular theory put forward to address the question of generation was preformation, the belief that “germs” had been in (...) existence since God created the world. This chapter first discusses the rise of preformationist thinking in the late seventeenth century before turning to the biological evidence that challenged preexistence in the mid-eighteenth century and analyzing the reaction it triggered among the preformationists. It also examines the work of Voltaire and Denis Diderot to illustrate how the generation debates are linked to the materialism question. The chapter concludes by showing how these controversies about nature and biology became entangled with politics in eighteenth-century France. (shrink)

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor (...) to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social-science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty-first social theory. (shrink)

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke, one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies. This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of 2008 and 2010. The format allowed for comments on previous writings and an engagement in an open-ended dialogue. Professor Birke talks about her key arguments and (...) outlooks on a changing field of research. The work of this English biologist is typical of a long and continuous feminist engagement with biology and ontological matters that reaches well beyond the more recently articulated ‘material turn’ of feminist theory. It touches upon feminist issues beyond the usual comfort zones of gender constructionism and human-centred research. Perhaps less recognized than for instance the names of Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, Lynda Birke’s oeuvre is part of the same long-standing and twofold critique from feminist scholars qua trained natural scientists. On the one hand, theirs is a powerful critique of biological determinism; on the other, an acutely observed contemporary critique of how merely cultural or socially reductionist approaches to the effervescently lively and biological might leave the corporeal, environmental or non-human animal critically undertheorized within feminist scholarship. In highlighting the work and arguments of Lynda Birke, it is hoped here to provide an accessible introduction to the critical questions and challenges that circumvent contemporary discussions within feminist technoscience as theory and political practice. (shrink)

The first part of this paper has shown that the development of regulatory genetics and the lactose operon model stemmed from laboratory cultures rooted in local traditions. A "physiological" culture may be recognized in the Pasteurian context. The institutional continuity provided the basis for a tenuous link between Pasteur, Lwoff, and Monod. My claim is that the "national" value of regulatory and physiological genetics is an artifact produced in the course of the legitimization process accompanying the institutionalisation of the discipline. (...) In the 1960s, the lactose operon model was turned into a "flag-object," a symbol of the new culture. The work done by the Pasteurian group became therefore the most important, if not the only, exemplar of molecular biology in France.The second part o f the paper described the origins of general patterns that dominated the building of molecular biology in France. The study of the relationships between molecular biologists and biochemists or immunologists revealed the existence of alternatives to the development of operon research, or to the convergence with molecular biology. Both examples uncover specific paths leading to achievements that might be viewed as international trends: the expansion of RNA and translation studies, and the development of cellular immunology. They illustrate two possible patterns of linking local settings and disciplinary traditions: an oligopolistic situation where a few groups or one institution dominate an entire field, and the emergence of "collective" trends through collaboration networks or schools. (shrink)

The difficulties of the biological taxonomy development are argued to have been historically associated with two main problems: 1) the problem of searching for essential features which was unachievable within the framework of empiric taxonomy andcould be solved as a part of the mature theory; 2) the problem of developing of a model of the biological object the remedies of which were developed only in the XX century. The author argues that both problems are associated with the development (...) of classificatory and system ontology and the relevant methodologies. The classificatory methodology from its inception is argued to have developed as a means of classification of biological diversity; furthermore it is claimed to have been assumed that the features representing classes possessed ontological nature that is they actually represent individual objects. The author concludes that taking into account the empiric nature of taxonomy that assumption turned to be false. In the modern taxonomy along with the classical approach a classificatory-system approach was developed. Fundamentally, it is a transition from the classical approach to the modern one which is held to imply the development of a system model of the study subject. (shrink)

The entry of time and history into biological systems of classification is perhaps the single most significant development in the history of biological systematics in the modern era. Darwin's claiming that descent is ‘… the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system’, rather than seeing the answer in the multitude of previous attempts to resolve the problem in terms of morphological affinities, analogies, and complex relations of resemblance, marked the (...) turning point in a long search into the meaning of biological taxonomy, and allowed the development of Darwin's insights by Haeckel, Plate and others into modern phylogenetic systematics. (shrink)

Neuroscience made major progress in unravelling the neural basis of mental features like self, consciousness, affect, etc. However, we nevertheless lack what recently has been described as “missing ingredient” or “common currency” in the relationship between neuronal and mental activity. Rather than putting forward yet another theory of the neural basis of mental features, I here suggest a change in our methodological strategy how to approach the brain, that is, our view or vantage point of the brain. Learning from astronomy (...) (Copernicus) and biology (Darwin), I suggest that we may want to change our currently pre-Copernican vantage point from within brain to a post-Copernican vantage point from beyond brain. Such post-Copernican vantage point from beyond brain allows us taking into view that what happens beyond the brain itself, e.g., the world, and how that shapes the brain and its neural activity, e.g., world-brain relation. We then lend empirical support to the world-brain relation by converging it with Karl Friston’s free energy principle that, as we see it, provides a neuro-ecological and therefore post-Copernican view of the brain. That, in turn, allows us taking into view that mental features are shaped by both world and brain and are therefore truly neuro-ecological rather than merely neuronal. This raises the question for the link, e.g., the “missing ingredient” or “common currency” of world brain relation and mental features. Recent empirical evidence suggests that temporo-spatial dynamics may provide such link as it characterizes both the world-brain relation’s free energy and mental features, e.g., their spatiotemporality as described in philosophy. Taken together, I here advocate a change in our methodological strategy on how to approach the brain, that is, a shift from a pre-Copernican vantage point from within brain to a post-Copernican vantage point from beyond brain. The latter allows us taking into view that what happens beyond the brain in the world and how that shapes the brain in such a way that it can yield mental features. This amounts to nothing less than a Copernican turn or revolution in neuroscience akin to the ones in astronomy (Copernicus) and biology (Darwin). (shrink)

I argue that contemporary philosophy of language in the analytic tradition rests on two fundamentally wrong assumptions: empiricism and externalism. After I show why these two assumptions are incorrect, I turn my attention to biological rationalism. Biological rationalism—a research program inspired by the work of Noam Chomsky—is committed to nativism and internalism. I believe biological rationalism provides the best framework to achieve a genuine understanding of language. I try to show this by considering the biological (...) rationalist answers to major problems in philosophy of language. (shrink)

‘Biochromatology’ can be defined as the study of the relationships between colours, and between colours and design in nature. Certain laws concerning biochromatics can be formulated in the terminology of the Colour Circle. One of them is that planes in warm colours and planes in cold colours never adjoin. Another law is that design is never polychromatic. It seems that the observed biochromatical facts can be explained with the help of the principle “optimal manifestation of colour”, which in turn (...) is based on the formative principles of matter itself. (shrink)

This paper describes a pattern of explanation prevalent in the biological sciences that I call a ‘lineage explanation’. The aim of these explanations is to make plausible certain trajectories of change through phenotypic space. They do this by laying out a series of stages, where each stage shows how some mechanism worked, and the differences between each adjacent stage demonstrates how one mechanism, through minor modifications, could be changed into another. These explanations are important, for though it is widely (...) accepted that there is an ‘incremental constraint’ on evolutionary change, in an important class of cases it is difficult to see how to satisfy this constraint. I show that lineage explanations answer important questions about evolutionary change, but do so by demonstrating differences between individuals rather than invoking population processes, such as natural selection.1. Introduction2. Turning a ‘Scale’ into a ‘Plume’3. Lineage Explanations in Biology3.1. The evolution of eyes3.2. The evolution of feathers4. The Two Dimensions of a Lineage Explanation4.1. The production dimension4.2. The continuity dimension4.3. The dual role of the parts5. Constraining the Explanations6. Operational and Generative Lineages7. Explaining Change Without Populations8. Conclusion. (shrink)

The value of biodiversity is usually confused with the value of biological resources, both actual and potential. A sharp distinction between biological resources and biodiversity offers a clearer insight into the value of biodiversity itself and therefore the need to preserve it. Biodiversity can be defined abstractly as the differences among biological entities. Using this definition, biodiversity can be seen more appropriately as: (a) a necessary precondition for the long term maintenance of biological resources, and therefore, (...) (b) an essential environmental condition. Three values of biodiversity are identified and arranged in a hierarchy: (1) the self-augmenting phenomenon of biodiversity maintains (2) the conditions necessary for the adaptive evolution of species and higher taxa, which in turn is necessary for providing humans with (3) a range of biological resources in the long term. Two broad policy implications emerge: increments of biodiversity should not be traded off against biological resources as if they were the same, and the conservation of biodiversity should be a constraint on the public interest, not a goal in service of the public interest. (shrink)

The article explores the influence of unproven specificity of pathogenesis manifested in clinical psychiatry and research. A selected literature review of studies attempting to identify a biological marker is presented. To date, the search for a biological marker to establish a psychiatric diagnosis has been unsuccessful. Clinical settings and programs are described which seem to be driven by psychological issues, one such example being the search for villains. Thus, specific assumptions about etiology affect therapy technique and treatment planning (...) and may be disadvantageous to patient care. Biological and psychological development in all of its phases is subject to a diverse range of perturbations, intrinsic as well as extrinsic. A flexible, balanced view is called for before specificity is extended to general theories, which, in turn, affect therapy and treatment settings. (shrink)

(2000). The Biology of Globalization. World Futures: Vol. 55, Challenges of Evolution at the Turn of the Millennium: Part III: The Chllenges of Globalization and Sustainability, pp. 105-127.

Rosenberg has recently argued that explanations supplied by (what he calls) functional biology are mere promissory notes for macromolecular adaptive explanations. Rosenberg's arguments currently constitute one of the most substantial challenges to the autonomy, irreducibility, and indispensability of the explanations supplied by functional biology. My responses to Rosenberg's arguments will generate a novel account of the autonomy of functional biology. This account will turn on the relations between counterfactuals, scientific explanations, and natural laws. Crucially, in their treatment of the (...) laws' relation to counterfactuals, Rosenberg's arguments beg the question against the autonomy of functional biology. This relation is considerably more subtle than is suggested by familiar slogans such as Laws support counterfactuals; accidents don't. (shrink)

Beginning in the 1940s, mass production of antibiotics involved the industrial-scale growth of microorganisms to harvest their metabolic products. Unfortunately, the use of antibiotics selects for resistance at answering scale. The turn to the study of antibiotic resistance in microbiology and medicine is examined, focusing on the realization that individual therapies targeted at single pathogens in individual bodies are environmental events affecting bacterial evolution far beyond bodies. In turning to biological manifestations of antibiotic use, sciences fathom material outcomes (...) of their own previous concepts. Archival work with stored soil and clinical samples produces a record described here as ‘the biology of history’: the physical registration of human history in bacterial life. This account thus foregrounds the importance of understanding both the materiality of history and the historicity of matter in theories and concepts of life today. (shrink)

Science is at present passing through a credibility crisis*. One could almost say a moral crisis. As a matter of fact we are standing at a turning point in the relationship between science and society, a turning point marked by the change from a social evolution characterized by high productivity and growth, into an evolution which might lead humanity to a new balance between individuality and collectivity.At the beginning of the 20th century and during its second half the scientific world (...) had suffered the impact of two significant revolutions: first of physics and then of biology. The basic discoveries in the field of physics led to applications in realms of energy, transportation, communication, electricity, electronics, and data processing. (shrink)