Workshop: the closure of constraints in practices

7 December 2024

Workshop: the closure of constraints in practices

16/12/2024 — 29 rue d’Ulm, Centre Cavaillès, École Normale Supérieure, Paris. Workshop organization: Maël Montévil, Anton Robert. Abstract What understanding does the closure of constraints bring about a biological system in practices? Without discussing particular cases, one cannot answer this question. The goal of this workshop is to bring together and synthesize individual modeling experiences […]

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New paper (2023): Ecosystem health and malfunctions: an organisational perspective

2 April 2024

New paper (2023): Ecosystem health and malfunctions: an organisational perspective

Published open-access in Biology and Philosophy Abstract: A recent idea of “ecosystem health” was introduced in the 1970s and 1980s to draws attention to the fact that ecosystems can become ill because of a reduction of properties such as primary productivity, functions and diversity of interactions among system components. Starting from the 1990s, this idea […]

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New Book (2023): Organization in Biology

22 November 2023

New Book (2023): Organization in Biology

Published open access by Springer From the editor’s introduction: For most of the twentieth century, biology forgot or largely neglected organization. By this term, I mean a certain mode of interaction among the parts of a system, which is by hypothesis distinctively realized by biological systems. While a systemic trend is progressively pervading various biological […]

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New Paper (2022), S. Rubin, M. Crucifix, Taking the Gaia Hypothesis at Face Value

24 November 2022

New Paper (2022), S. Rubin, M. Crucifix, Taking the Gaia Hypothesis at Face Value

Published in Ecological Complexity Abstract: The interest in understanding the climate-life system that has fostered the Gaia hypothesis (GH) has resulted in multiple explanatory theories, making its status unclear and controversial. This work seeks to bring some clarity to the debates surrounding the GH with the aim to make it amenable to scientific scrutiny. We discuss what […]

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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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IAS Research seminar 2022/2023: Sergio Rubin

13 October 2022

IAS Research seminar 2022/2023: Sergio Rubin

The first session of the of the IAS research seminar 2022/2023 will take place next Thursday, October 20th, at 4pm. To connect remotely please register by writing to: andrea.gambarotto@ehu.eus Biological Autonomy and Gaian Systems Sergio Rubin Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium In this presentation it […]

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Enaction and Dialectics – Part I

6 October 2022

Enaction and Dialectics – Part I

The enactive approach is a rich perspective on the big questions of life and mind originating in the work of Francisco Varela and colleagues. [1] It is a perspective in continuous development, which makes it difficult to condense in a brief text. Enaction is a way of looking at life and mind as continuous. This […]

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