Workshop: Agency & Life (Syros, July 4-5)

22 June 2023

Workshop: Agency & Life (Syros, July 4-5)

We are glad to announce this workshop on the notion of organismal agency, which will take place in hybrid form at the University of the Aegean, Syros, Greece. Those who wish to attend the workshop online please contact Argyris Arnellos at arar@aegean.gr before the 3rd of July. Please be aware that times indicated below correspond […]

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NEW PAPER (2023), A. Nahas, C.B. Sachs: What’s at stake in the debate over naturalizing teleology? An overlooked metatheoretical debate

25 April 2023

NEW PAPER (2023), A. Nahas, C.B. Sachs: What’s at stake in the debate over naturalizing teleology? An overlooked metatheoretical debate

Published open access in Synthese Abstract. Recent accounts of teleological naturalism hold that organisms are intrinsically goaldirected entities. We argue that supporters and critics of this view have ignored the ways in which it is used to address quite different problems. One problem is about biology and concerns whether an organism-centered account of teleological ascriptions […]

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From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part II

1 February 2023

From Philosophy to Neuroscience and Back Again. An Interview with Terrence Deacon. Part II

From the Symbolic Species to Incomplete Nature Auguste Nahas  So it’s only in your first book, The Symbolic Species, that you came back to Peirce.  Terrence Deacon Yes. I was thinking about the evolutionary origins of human language. It was very clear to me that you just couldn’t talk about ‘pre-language’. Animals aren’t speaking in […]

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WORKSHOP: Intersecting paths across mathematics, biology, and epistemology: a colloquium in honor of Giuseppe Longo and Ana Soto

18 January 2023

21 & 22 October 2022 In this colloquium, we celebrate the 75th birthdays of Giuseppe Longo and Ana Soto. We have chosento show their distinct trajectories and then how they intersect while working on the foundations oftheoretical knowledge with a biology focus. In this respect, both Giuseppe Longo and Ana Sotomaintain a close relationship with […]

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New paper: A. Fábregas-Tajeda, F. Vergara-Silva (2022), ‘Man-Made Futures’: Conrad Hal Waddington, Biological Theory and the Anthropocene 

4 November 2022

New paper: A. Fábregas-Tajeda, F. Vergara-Silva (2022), ‘Man-Made Futures’: Conrad Hal Waddington, Biological Theory and the Anthropocene 

Published in Azimuth, preprint available here. Abstract: How biology should figure in Anthropocene studies, hitherto stemming from Earth sciences and a broad constellation of human and social sciences, is still an unsettled issue among scholars. Here, we contribute with a historiographically-informed perspective on the specific role that ‘biological theory’ has played in past rounds of […]

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Putting the organism back into biology

2 November 2022

Putting the organism back into biology

Biology studies organisms. This seems to be a truism. But is this assumption really correct? Some scientists and philosophers hold that it is not. Developmental biologist Brian Goodwin, for example, states:   “Organisms have disappeared as fundamental entities, as basic unities, from contemporary biology because they have no real status as centres of causal agency. […]

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