Friedrich Engels’ dialectical assessment of modern science resulted from his fascination with the natural sciences in combination with his resurging interest in the work of “old Hegel.” Engels became especially interested in what he saw as the molecular essence of life, namely proteins or, more specifically, albumin, seeing life as the mode of existence of these enigmatic substances. Hegelian dialectics is crucial for a dialectical materialist understanding of contemporary technoscience. The dialectical materialist understanding of technoscience as a research practice builds (...) on Engels, but also on later authors who were inspired by his writings, e.g., life scientists such as Haldane and Bernal. Considering the criticism raised against Engels’ dialectics by 20th-century Marxists, a dialectical diagnostic of contemporary technoscience can be achieved, which shifts the focus from artificial albumin as “living matter” to contemporary research on synthetic cells. (shrink)

This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with (...) substance ontology. We illustrate the consequences of embracing an ontology of processes in biology by considering some of its implications for physiology, genetics, evolution, and medicine. And we attempt to locate the subsequent chapters of the book in relation to the position we defend. (shrink)

Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels’ works has been somewhat a common but rather unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. A bold line seems to shape the entire Engels debate and separate two opposite views in this regard: Engels the contaminator of Marx’s materialism vs. Engels the self-started genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has (...) not enjoyed so far is a critical reflection upon the relationship between different layers of this text: authorial, textual, editorial and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, inquiry into the elements that structure the debate on “Dialectics of Nature,” and into the different political and philosophical functions attached to it, makes it possible to relocate the meaning of “dialectics” in a more precise context. Engels’ dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is, but he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit. (shrink)

Ecological communities are seldom, if ever, biological individuals. They lack causal boundaries as the populations that constitute communities are not congruent and rarely have persistent functional roles regulating the communities’ higher-level properties. Instead we should represent ecological communities indexically, by identifying ecological communities via the network of weak causal interactions between populations that unfurl from a starting set of populations. This precisification of ecological communities helps identify how community properties remain invariant, and why they have robust characteristics. This respects the (...) diversity and aggregational nature of these complex systems while still vindicating them as units worthy of investigation. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

Consciousness attracts the attention of researchers representing various disciplines. Hence, there is a demand for a theoretical tool that could integrate data and theoretical concepts originating from distinct fields. The paper proposes to use the framework of the theory of integrative levels. The development and the definitions of the concept of levels are briefly discussed. The final part of the paper presents a proposal for incorporating the levels of consciousness into the framework of the integrative levels theory.

Physiologists and historians are still debating what conceptually differentiates each of the three major modern theories of regulation: the constancy of the milieu inte´rieur, homeostasis and allostasis. Here I propose that these models incarnate two distinct regimes of politization of the life sciences.This perspective leads me to suggest that the historicization of physiological norms is intrinsic to the allostatic model, which thus divides it fundamentally from the two others. I analyze the allostatic model in the light of the Canguilhemian theory, (...) showing how the former contributed to the development of a critical epistemology immune to both naturalist essentialism and social constructivism. With a unique clarity in the history of physiology, allostasis gives us a model of the convergence of historical epistemology and scientific practice. As such it played a key role in codifying the epistemological basis of certain current research programs that, in the fields of social epidemiology and feminist neuroscience, promote what we name here a critical physiology. (shrink)

Foot , Hursthouse , and Thompson , along with other philosophers, have argued for a metaethical position, the natural goodness approach, that claims moral judgments are, or are on a par with, teleological claims made in the biological sciences. Specifically, an organism’s flourishing is characterized by how well they function as specified by the species to which they belong. In this essay, I first sketch the Neo-Aristotelian natural goodness approach. Second, I argue that critics who claim that this sort of (...) approach is inconsistent with evolutionary biology due to its species essentialism are incorrect. Third, I contend that combining the natural goodness account of natural-historical judgments with our best account of natural normativity, the selected effects theory of function, leads to implausible moral judgments. This is so if selected effects function are understood in terms of evolution by natural selection, but also if they are characterized in terms of cultural evolution. Thus, I conclude that proponents of the natural goodness approach must either embrace non-naturalistic vitalism or troubling moral revisionism. (shrink)

Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other’s niches. By transforming natural-selection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems—a process often referred to as “ecosystem engineering.” An important emphasis of niche construction theory (NCT) is that acquired characters play an evolutionary (...) role through transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species has engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Humans can construct developmental environments that feed back to affect how individuals learn and develop and the diseases to which they are exposed. Here we provide an introduction to NCT and illustrate some of its more important implications for the human sciences. (shrink)

The rhetoric of the social model of disability is presented, and its basic claims are critiqued. Proponents of the social model use the distinction between impairment and disability to reduce disabilities to a single social dimension—social oppression. They downplay the role of biological and mental conditions in the lives of disabled people. Consequences of denying biological and mental realities involving disabilities are discussed. People will benefit most by recognizing both the biological and the social dimensions of disabilities.

Darwin's ideas on variation, heredity, and development differ significantly from twentieth-century views. First, Darwin held that environmental changes, acting either on the reproductive organs or the body, were necessary to generate variation. Second, heredity was a developmental, not a transmissional, process; variation was a change in the developmental process of change. An analysis of Darwin's elaboration and modification of these two positions from his early notebooks (1836-1844) to the last edition of the /Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication/ (1875) (...) complements previous Darwin scholarship on these issues. Included in this analysis is a description of the way Darwin employed the distinction between transmission and development, as well as the conceptual relationship he saw between heredity and variation. This paper is part of a larger project comparing commitments regarding variation during the latter half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Continental philosophies of science tend to exemplify holistic themes connecting order and contingency, questions and answers, writers and readers, speakers and hearers. Such philosophies of science also tend to feature a fundamental emphasis on the historical and cultural situatedness of discourse as significant; relevance of mutual attunement of speaker and hearer; necessity of pre-linguistic cognition based in human engagement with a common socio-cultural historical world; role of narrative and metaphor as explanatory; sustained emphasis on understanding questioning; truth seen as horizonal, (...) aletheic, or perspectival; and a tolerance for paradoxical and complex forms of expression. Continental philosophy of science is thus more comprehensive than philosophy of science in the analytic tradition, including (and as analytic philosophy of science does not tend to include) perspectives on the history of science as well as the social and practical dimensions of scientific discovery. Where analytic philosophy is about reducing or, indeed, eliminating the perennial problems of philosophy, Continental philosophy is all about thinking and that will mean, as both Heidegger and Nietzsche emphasize, making such problems more not less problematic. (shrink)

Residual categories are those which cannot be formally represented within a given classification system. We examine the forms that residuality takes within our information systems today, and explore some silences which form around those inhabiting particular residual categories. We argue that there is significant ethical and political work to be done in exploring residuality.

Levins and Lewontin have contributed significantly to our philosophical understanding of the structures, processes, and purposes of biological mathematical theorizing and modeling. Here I explore their separate and joint pleas to avoid making abstract and ideal scientific models ontologically independent by confusing or conflating our scientific models and the world. I differentiate two views of theorizing and modeling, orthodox and dialectical, in order to examine Levins and Lewontin’s, among others, advocacy of the latter view. I compare the positions of these (...) two views with respect to four points regarding ontological assumptions: (1) the origin of ontological assumptions, (2) the relation of such assumptions to the formal models of the same theory, (3) their use in integrating and negotiating different formal models of distinct theories, and (4) their employment in explanatory activity. Dialectical is here used in both its Hegelian–Marxist sense of opposition and tension between alternative positions and in its Platonic sense of dialogue between advocates of distinct theories. I investigate three case studies, from Levins and Lewontin as well as from a recent paper of mine, that show the relevance and power of the dialectical understanding of theorizing and modeling. (shrink)

I analyze the importance of parts in the style of biological theorizing that I call compositional biology. I do this by investigating various aspects, including partitioning frames and explanatory accounts, of the theoretical perspectives that fall under and are guided by compositional biology. I ground this general examination in a comparative analysis of three different disciplines with their associated compositional theoretical perspectives: comparative morphology, functional morphology, and developmental biology. I glean data for this analysis from canonical textbooks and defend the (...) use of such texts for the philosophy of science. I end with a discussion of the importance of recognizing formal and compositional biology as two genuinely different ways of doing biology – the differences arising more from their distinct methodologies than from scientific discipline included or natural domain studied. Ultimately, developing a translation manual between the two styles would be desirable as they currently are, at times, in conflict. (shrink)

Explanatory Externalism states that the only adaptive force in evolution is natural selection. Explanatory Externalism is a central thesis of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. The etiological theory of natural selected-effect functions also advocates Explanatory Externalism. According to this theory, natural selection is the process responsible for determining the proper natural functions of traits. However, I will point out several challenges to Explanatory Externalism that are proposed primarily by developmental biology and its various subfields. Based on these challenges, this paper will (...) argue why biological functions cannot be fully explained by the selected-effect theory, i.e., that a theory of biological functions must adopt some kind of Explanatory Internalism. At the end of this paper, I will discuss whether or not Explanatory Internalism entails a pluralistic view of biological functions, and how this discussion is related to the different explanations of fit and diversity found in evolutionary biology. (shrink)

This paper confronts the familiar prejudice in Western Marxism that Engels’ thought, as articulated in Anti-Duhring and the Dialectics of Nature, is of marginal interest and should be excised from Marxist theory. I argue that this view is mistaken. If we do not take seriously his insights about science, philosophy, nature, and history, his insights will take a fourfold revenge upon us. Natural science takes its revenge by unleashing technology that subjugates us in ways we cannot anticipate, understand or control. (...) Philosophy, in turn, takes revenge on science for neglecting the philosophical presuppositions of its own worldview. Nature itself takes its revenge upon those who consider it to be some formless and passive matter, deprived of history and negativity, responding to our productive activity in surprising ways that, without a rational form of regulation, could lead to our own extinction. Lastly, history takes revenge on those ‘well intentioned’ actors who try to impose their will upon it without a scientific knowledge of its internal, necessary, and objective forces. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the disruptive impact of Darwinian selectionism for the century-long tradition in which the environment had a direct causative role in shaping an organism’s traits. In the case of humans, the surrounding environment often determined not only the physical, but also the mental and moral features of individuals and whole populations. With its apparatus of indirect effects, random variations, and a much less harmonious view of nature and adaptation, Darwinian selectionism severed the deep imbrication of organism (...) and milieu posited by these traditional environmentalist models. This move had radical implications well beyond strictly biological debates. In my essay, I discuss the problematization of the moral idiom of environmentalism by William James and August Weismann who adopted a selectionist view of the development of mental faculties. These debates show the complex moral discourse associated with the environmentalist-selectionist dilemma. They also well illustrate how the moral reverberations of selectionism went well beyond the stereotyped associations with biological fatalism or passivity of the organism. Rereading them today may be helpful as a genealogical guide to the complex ethical quandaries unfolding in the current postgenomic scenario in which a revival of new environmentalist themes is taking place. (shrink)

Earth-shaping catastrophic events have long focused the attention of the geographical and geological sciences, and captured the public imagination. During the past 40 years, neocatastrophism has emerged as a key paradigm that reflects widespread changes involving cultural, scientific, political and technological spheres. Nonetheless, the extent, chronology and origin of this trend are equivocal. Here, we use Google Ngram to quantitatively explore the recent development of catastrophism. We elucidate a discernable rise in neocatastrophic thinking during the last quarter of the twenty-first (...) century that can be linked to the environmental awakening of the 1960s. It is suggested that these discourses of ‘shock’ and ‘fear’ partly correspond to a media-driven dramatization of natural hazards, exploited by scientists and journalists to attract wider readership. (shrink)

Edward O. Wilson's forays into human sociobiology have been the target of persistent, vehement attack by his Harvard colleague in evolutionary biology, Richard C. Lewontin. Through examination of existing documents in the case, together with in-depth personal interviews of Wilson, Lewontin, and other biologists, the reasons for Wilson's stance and Lewontin's criticisms are uncovered. It is argued that the dispute is not primarily personally or politically motivated, but involves a conflict between long-term scientific-cum-moral agendas, with the reductionist program as a (...) key issue. It is concluded that it is in the interest of both disputants to keep the controversy alive. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue for four related claims. First, Richard Levins’ classic “The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology” was a statement and defense of theoretical population biology growing out of collaborations between Robert MacArthur, Richard Lewontin, E. O. Wilson, and others. Second, I argue that the essay served as a response to the rise of systems ecology especially as pioneered by Kenneth Watt. Third, the arguments offered by Levins against systems ecology and in favor of his own (...) methodological program are best construed as “pragmatic”. Fourth, I consider limitations of Levins’ arguments given contemporary population biology. (shrink)

Philosophy of immunology is a subfield of philosophy of biology dealing with ontological and epistemological issues related to the studies of the immune system. While speculative investigations and abstract analyses have always been part of immune theorizing, until recently philosophers have largely ignored immunology. Yet the implications for understanding the philosophical basis of organismal functions framed by immunity offer new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology and medicine. Developed in the context of history of medicine, theoretical biology, and medical anthropology, (...) philosophy of immunology differs from these related branches of study in its focus on traditional philosophical questions concerning identity, individuality, ecology, cognition, scientific methodology and theory construction. This broad agenda derives from immunology’s multifaceted research program that has developed from its initial clinical challenges of host defense, transplantation, autoimmunity, tumor immunology, and allergy. In addition to these well-established research areas, immunity is now understood to play a central role in other physiological functions, development, ecology, and evolutionary mechanics. Holding together these diverse domains of inquiry lie philosophical commitments oriented by organismal identity. In this regard, pertinent issues are raised concerning cognition (organization of immune perception and information processing), the character of individuality (framed by the ecological context of immune-mediated assimilation and rejection), and the dynamics of complex systems (understood as holistic systems biology). Indeed, immunology, in the context of cognitive science, evolutionary biology, environmental sciences, and development provides multi-focal perspectives for philosophy of science. (shrink)

Richard Lewontin is often cited as an inspiration and founder of what is now known as Niche Construction Theory. The first goal of this paper is to argue that they present distinct arguments from niche construction against Adaptationism. While Niche Construction Theory argues that natural selection is not the only adaptive evolutionary force, Lewontin rejects the externalist characterization of natural selection. The key difference lies in the types of phenomena that are allowed to count as “niche construction” and their argumentative (...) roles. The second goal is to argue that it is time to revive Lewontin’s argument. I argue that it finds renewed support in Denis Walsh’s ecological affordance framework and empirical evidence from ecological developmental biology. Reexamining the roots of Niche Construction Theory, I suggest that the rich conceptual resources therein provide a way for Niche Construction Theory to also develop a neo-Lewontinian argument against the externalism of natural selection explanations. (shrink)

Nobel-price winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen introduced in 2000 the concept of the Anthropocene as the name for the successor geological period to the Holocene. The Holocene started about 12,000 years ago and is characterized by the relatively stable and temperate climatic and environmental conditions that were conducive to the development of human societies. Until recently, human development had relatively little impact on the dynamics of geological time. Although disagreement exists over the exact birth date of the Anthropocene, it is (...) indisputable that the impact of human activity on the geo-climatic environment became more pronounced from the industrial revolution onwards, leading to a situation in which humans are now widely considered to have an eco-geologically critical impact on the earth's bio-physical system. The most obvious example is the accumulation of greenhouse gases like CO2and Methane (CH4) in the atmosphere and the changes this induces in climatic dynamics. Others are the growing homogenization of biodiversity as a result of human-induced species migration, mass extinction and bio-diversity loss, the manufacturing of new (sub-)species through genetic modification, or the geodetic consequences resulting from, for example, large dam construction, mining and changing sea-levels. (shrink)

A global economy powered by non-solar energy sources is limited by global warming, finite reserves and concomitant insults to the earth's biosphere, including our own species. Some of these impacts, such as loss of biodiversity, will be irreversible. Without constraints on the reproduction of capital, the global driver of the contemporary environmental crisis, these impacts will intensify. This is not a necessary outcome for an economy utilizing the high efficiency capture of solar energy, a conclusion informed by consideration of the (...) heat budget of the earth's surface and the laws of thermodynamics. Such a solarbased economy managed by containment of the socially modified environment is a necessary condition for a global civilization realizing the Marxian concept of communism. (shrink)

I have learned a lot from Evan Thompson’s book–his scholarship is formidable, and his taste for relatively overlooked thinkers is admirable–but I keep stumbling over the strain induced by his self-assigned task of demonstrating that his heroes–Varela and Maturana, Merleau-Ponty and (now) Husserl, Oyama and Moss and others–have shattered the comfortable assumptions of orthodoxy, and outlined radical new approaches to the puzzles of life and mind. The irony is that Thompson is such a clear and conscientious expositor that he makes (...) it much easier for me to see that the ideas he expounds, while often truly excellent, are not really all that revolutionary, but, at best, valuable correctives to the sorts of oversimplifications that tend to get turned into mantras by sheer repetition, in the textbooks and popular accounts of these topics in the media. (shrink)

This thesis is about the body and about how medical discourses conceptualise the body in health and in illness. However, any inquisitiveness about the body is determined by historical, social and political environment that nurtures the discursive formations of knowledge. I focus particularly on the conceptualisation of the body in the two distinct medical traditions of Western and Chinese medicine. I examine Michel Foucault's analysis on the medical gaze and on the external technologies of power deployed on the body of (...) the individual and on the social body. The knowledge generated from the medical gaze is articulated through a normalising and prescriptive discourse. The gaze of Chinese medicine that looks at the workings of the cosmos to define the truth about the body generates similar authoritative knowledge that targets the individual and the social body. However, this effect of power, although it never disappears entirely, undergoes significant transformations when it enters the arena of human activities and the potential for improvisation in the behaviour of the human actor. There is always a gap between the text and the practice. (shrink)

: A central claim of Longino's contextual empiricism is that scientific inquiry, even when "properly conducted", lacks the capacity to screen out the influence of contextual values on its results. I'll show first that Longino's attack against the epistemic integrity of science suffers from fatal empirical weaknesses. Second I'll explain why Longino's practical proposition for suppressing biases in science, drawn from her contextual empiricism, is too demanding and, therefore, unable to serve its purpose. Finally, drawing on Bourdieu's sociological analysis of (...) scientific communities, I'll sketch an alternative view of scientific practice reconciling a thoroughly social view of science (such as Longino's) with a defense of its epistemic integrity. (shrink)

Different explanations of color vision favor different philosophical positions: Computational vision is more compatible with objectivism (the color is in the object), psychophysics and neurophysiology with subjectivism (the color is in the head). Comparative research suggests that an explanation of color must be both experientialist (unlike objectivism) and ecological (unlike subjectivism). Computational vision's emphasis on optimally prespecified features of the environment (i.e., distal properties, independent of the sensory-motor capacities of the animal) is unsatisfactory. Conceiving of visual perception instead as the (...) visual guidance of activity in an environment that is determined largely by that very activity suggests new directions for research. (shrink)

The rejection of the ‘dialectics of nature’ has long been thought of as the most fundamental factor distinguishing Western Marxism from official Soviet-style Marxism. Yet, in Tailism and the Dialectic, Georg Lukács – perhaps the most influential figure in Western Marxism – strongly endorses the existence of an objective dialectic in nature. A close examination of Lukács’s main writings on science shows, however, that he still in effect denied the possibility of applying dialectical method to nature. This paradox is bound (...) up with a dualistic conception of natural and social science with distinctly adverse implications for the development of an ecological Marxism. (shrink)