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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On hemianopsia, vision and adaptive reactions in organism’s pathological states

29 November 2022

On hemianopsia, vision and adaptive reactions in organism’s pathological states

In an unpublished manuscript datable to 1956-1957, La vision comme modèle de la connaissance[1] (Vision as a model of knowledge), the philosopher of medicine and biology Georges Canguilhem referred to specific biological-adaptive mechanisms compensating for some human vision anomalies, particularly hemianopic anomalies. In individuals in whom it tends to occur, hemianopsia (or hemianopia) involves the loss of one half of a […]

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The Quest for Scientific Image of Mind

8 November 2022

The Quest for Scientific Image of Mind

The question of the place of mind in nature is one of the oldest and deepest questions in philosophy and the sciences. If the physical sciences to tell us ‘what nature is’, what happens to mental phenomena: thoughts, beliefs, desires, emotions, memories, and ideals? For centuries, philosophers, theologians, and scientists argued about what a “science […]

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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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Mapping Theories of Life into Cell Biochemistry

18 October 2022

Mapping Theories of Life into Cell Biochemistry

An Interview with Jannie Hofmeyr in Three Parts What is life? This is a question biologists have almost forgotten to ask. Apart from a few lonely souls who occupy themselves with astrobiology or the origin of life, we no longer seem to wonder about life itself. Maybe we have lost the forest for the trees? […]

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Enaction and Dialectics – Part II

11 October 2022

Enaction and Dialectics – Part II

In the first part I have claimed that dialectical thinking is part and parcel of the enactive approach. I will now try to substantiate this claim. In the 1991 book The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, and Rosch draw on developmental and evolutionary biology to prepare the reader for the idea of embodied action as a […]

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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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