Past & Upcoming PiBM Seminars
Philippe Huneman on "Biological individuality: organisms, ecosystems, or agents?"
On March 10 at 17h (Paris time), Philippe Huneman will give the next PiBM seminar talk. This talk will be hybrid and you can find the details here: https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/philippe-huneman/
Abstract
Biological individuality and organisms seem to be two coextensive concepts. While philosophers often take organisms – trees, camels, etc.- as paradigm examples of individuality, individuality in general, for most biologists, exist as organisms. However the concept of organism may pertain to two kinds of rationality. In the wake of developmental theory and comparative anatomy, it has been understood as a organized and self-organized whole – a Kantian view often held nowadays by evo-devo thinkers (e.g. Gilbert and Sarkar 2000), as well as many theoretical biologists (e.g. Varela). But another view, stemming from evolutionary biology’s questioning of the evolution of individuality (Michod 1999), addresses individuals from the perspective of units of selection (e.g. Clarke 2010). Organisms then appear as a result of evolution instead of an ontological category. They are, as Huxley (1942) wrote, ‘bundles of adaptation’, which strongly opposes the evo-devo intuition of organisms as a cohesive self-organizing and self-maintaining process. As a consequence, in this second view, individuality does not require self-organisation, and the concept becomes much more liberal than the Kantian view.
But in this talk I’ll confront this conceptual duality to another one, which appears when one considers recent theoretical literature about organisms. In some areas of philosophy and biological theory, authors defend the idea that organisms are agents (be it in an analogical mode, e.g. Grafen 2014, Okasha 2018, or in a strongly ontological mode, e.g. Walsh 2015). In other areas, wholly distinct, people use the ecosystem concept as a scheme to understand organisms (e.g. Costello 2012). Hence, organisms can be understood either as agents pursuing goals, or as sets of heterospecific elements made cohesive by a network of ecological interactions. Both schemes shed light on distinct phenomena, but their articulation remains problematic.
By exploring these two conceptual distinctions regarding biological individuals, I intend to expose the conceptual map proper to the notions of individuality and organisms, and question its internal unity.
Nick Lane (University College London, UK), title TBA
On April 1 at 17h (Paris time), Nick Lane will give a talk in the PiBM seminar series and will be visiting Bordeaux in person.
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. Prof Lane’s research is on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origin and Evolution (CLOE). He was awarded the 2009 UCL Provost’s Venture Research Prize, the 2011 BMC Research Award for Genetics, Genomics, Bioinformatics and Evolution, the 2015 Biochemical Society Award for his outstanding contribution to molecular life sciences and 2016 Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture, the UK’s premier award for excellence in communicating science.
Find the details of Nick Lane's talk here:
https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/nick-lane-university-college-london-uk-title-tba/
Video for Felipe De Brigard's past PiBM Talk
In case you missed it or want to rewatch it, you can now find the video of Felipe's talk in the PiBM Seminar Series on dynamic cognitive systems here: https://www.philinbiomed.org/event/felipe-de-brigard/ |
