Feminist philosophers of biology bring the tools of feminist theory, and in particular the tools of feminist philosophy of science, to investigations of the life sciences. While the critical examination of the categories of sex and gender (which will be explained below) takes a central place, the methods, ontological assumptions, and foundational concepts of biology more generally have also enjoyed considerable feminist scrutiny. Through such investigations, feminist philosophers of biology reveal the extent to which the theory and practice of particular (...) scientific disciplines and research programs (and, indeed, their philosophical study) are intertwined with both value judgments and social hierarchies. (shrink)

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...) extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa. (shrink)

This chapter draws on insights from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to demonstrate the ontological inadequacy of the machine conception of the organism. The thermodynamic character of living systems underlies the importance of metabolism and calls for the adoption of a processual view, exemplified by the Heraclitean metaphor of the stream of life. This alternative conception is explored in its various historical formulations and the extent to which it captures the nature of living systems is examined. Following this, the chapter considers the metaphysical (...) implications of reconceptualizing the organism from complex machine to flowing stream. What do we learn when we reject the mechanical and embrace the processual? Three key lessons for biological ontology are identified. The first is that activity is a necessary condition for existence. The second is that persistence is grounded in the continuous self-maintenance of form. And the third is that order does not entail design. (shrink)

The concept of life plays a crucial role in the debate on synthetic biology. The first part of this chapter outlines the controversial debate on the status of the concept of life in current science and philosophy. Against this background, synthetic biology and the discourse on its scientific and societal consequences is revealed as an exception. Here, the concept of life is not only used as buzzword but also discussed theoretically and links the ethical aspects with the epistemological prerequisites and (...) the ontological consequences of synthetic biology. The second part examines this point of intersection and analyses some of the issues which are discussed in terms of the concept of life. The third part turns to the history of the concept of life. It offers an examination of scientific and philosophical discourses on life at the turn of the 20th century and suggests a surprising result: In the light of this history, synthetic biology leads to well-known debates, arguments, notions and questions. But it is concluded that the concept of life is too ambiguous and controversial to be useful for capturing the actual practice of synthetic biology. In the fourth part I argue that with regard to the ethical evaluation of synthetic biology, the ambiguity of the concept of life is not as problematic as sometimes held because other challenges are more important. The question whether the activity of synthetic biological systems should be conceived as life or not is primarily theoretical. (shrink)

Following Mayr (1961) evolutionary biologists often maintain that the hallmark of biology is its evolutionary perspective. In this view, biologists distinguish themselves from other natural scientists by their emphasis on why-questions. Why-questions are legitimate in biology but not in other natural sciences because of the selective character of the process by means of which living objects acquire their characteristics. For that reason, why-questions should be answered in terms of natural selection. Functional biology is seen as a reductionist science that applies (...) physics and chemistry to answer how-questions but lacks a biological point of view of its own. In this paper I dispute this image of functional biology. A close look at the kinds of issues studied in biology and at the way in which these issues are studied shows that functional biology employs a distinctive biological perspective that is not rooted in selection. This functional perspective is characterized by its concern with the requirements of the life-state and the way in which these are met. (shrink)

The promises of nanotechnology have been framed by a variety of metaphors, that not only channel the attention of the public, orient the questions asked by researchers, and convey epistemic choices closely linked to ethical preferences. In particular, the image of the ‘therapeutic missile’ commonly used to present targeted drug delivery devices emphasizes precision, control, surveillance and efficiency. Such values are highly praised in the current context of crisis of pharmaceutical innovation where military metaphors foster a general mobilization of resources (...) from multiple fields of cutting-edge research. The missile metaphor, reminiscent of Paul Ehrlich’s ‘magic bullet’, has framed the problem in simple terms: how to deliver the right dose in the right place at the right moment? Chemists, physicists and engineers who design multi-functional devices operating in vitro can think in such terms, as long as the devices are not actually operating through the messy environment of the body. A close look at what has been done and what remains to be done suggests that the metaphor of the “therapeutic missile” is neither sufficient, nor even necessary. Recent developments in nanomedicine suggest that therapeutic efficacy cannot be obtained without negotiating with the biological milieu and taking advantage of what it affords. An ‘oikological’ approach seems more appropriate, more heuristic and more promising than the popular missile. It is based on the view of organism as an oikos that has to be carefully managed. The dispositions of nanocapsules have to be coupled with the affordances of the environment. As it requires dealing with nanoparticles as relational entities (defined by their potential for interactions) rather than as stable substances (defined by intrinsic properties) this metaphor eventually might well change research priorities in nanotechnology in general. (shrink)

Ist Biologie das jüngste Mitglied in der Familie von Big Science? Die vermehrte Zusammenarbeit in der biologischen Forschung wurde in der Folge des Human Genome Project zwar zum Gegenstand hitziger Diskussionen, aber Debatten und Reflexionen blieben meist im Polemischen verhaftet und zeigten eine begrenzte Wertschätzung für die Vielfalt und Erklärungskraft des Konzepts von Big Science. Zur gleichen Zeit haben Wissenschafts- und Technikforscher/innen in ihren Beschreibungen des Wandels der Forschungslandschaft die Verwendung des Begriffs Big Science gemieden. Dieser interdisziplinäre Artikel kombiniert eine (...) begriffliche Analyse des Konzepts von Big Science mit unterschiedlichen Daten und Ideen aus einer Multimethodenuntersuchung mehrerer großer Forschungsprojekte in der Biologie. Ziel ist es, ein empirisch fundiertes, nuanciertes und analytisch nützliches Verständnis von Big Biology zu entwickeln und die normativen Debatten mit ihren einfachen Dichotomien und rhetorischen Positionen hinter sich zu lassen. Zwar kann das Konzept von Big Science als eine Mode in der Wissenschaftspolitik gesehen werden – inzwischen vielleicht sogar als ein altmodisches Konzept –, doch lautet meine innovative Argumentation, dass dessen analytische Verwendung unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf die Ausweitung der Zusammenarbeit in den Biowissenschaften lenkt. Die Analyse von Big Biology zeigt Unterschiede zu Big Physics und anderen Formen von Big Science, namentlich in den Mustern der Forschungsorganisation, der verwendeten Technologien und der gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhänge, in denen sie tätig ist. So können Reflexionen über Big Science, Big Biology und ihre Beziehungen zur Wissensproduktion die jüngsten Behauptungen über grundlegende Veränderungen in der Life Science-Forschung in einen historischen Kontext stellen. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIst Biologie das jüngste Mitglied in der Familie von Big Science? Die vermehrte Zusammenarbeit in der biologischen Forschung wurde in der Folge des Human Genome Project zwar zum Gegenstand hitziger Diskussionen, aber Debatten und Reflexionen blieben meist im Polemischen verhaftet und zeigten eine begrenzte Wertschätzung für die Vielfalt und Erklärungskraft des Konzepts von Big Science. Zur gleichen Zeit haben Wissenschafts- und Technikforscher/innen in ihren Beschreibungen des Wandels der Forschungslandschaft die Verwendung des Begriffs Big Science gemieden. Dieser interdisziplinäre Artikel kombiniert eine (...) begriffliche Analyse des Konzepts von Big Science mit unterschiedlichen Daten und Ideen aus einer Multimethodenuntersuchung mehrerer großer Forschungsprojekte in der Biologie. Ziel ist es, ein empirisch fundiertes, nuanciertes und analytisch nützliches Verständnis von Big Biology zu entwickeln und die normativen Debatten mit ihren einfachen Dichotomien und rhetorischen Positionen hinter sich zu lassen. Zwar kann das Konzept von Big Science als eine Mode in der Wissenschaftspolitik gesehen werden – inzwischen vielleicht sogar als ein altmodisches Konzept –, doch lautet meine innovative Argumentation, dass dessen analytische Verwendung unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf die Ausweitung der Zusammenarbeit in den Biowissenschaften lenkt. Die Analyse von Big Biology zeigt Unterschiede zu Big Physics und anderen Formen von Big Science, namentlich in den Mustern der Forschungsorganisation, der verwendeten Technologien und der gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhänge, in denen sie tätig ist. So können Reflexionen über Big Science, Big Biology und ihre Beziehungen zur Wissensproduktion die jüngsten Behauptungen über grundlegende Veränderungen in der Life Science-Forschung in einen historischen Kontext stellen. (shrink)

Living organisms are currently most often seen as complex dynamical systems that develop and evolve in relation to complex environments. Reflections on the meaning of the complex dynamical nature of living systems show an overwhelming multiplicity in approaches, descriptions, definitions and methodologies. Instead of sustaining an epistemic pluralism, which often functions as a philosophical armistice in which tolerance and so-called neutrality discharge proponents of the burden to clarify the sources and conditions of agreement and disagreement, this paper aims at analysing: (...) (i) what has been Kant's original conceptualisation of living organisms as natural purposes; (ii) how the current perspectives are to be related to Kant's viewpoint; (iii) what are the main trends in current complexity thinking. One of the basic ideas is that the attention for structure and its epistemological consequences witness to a great extent of Kant's viewpoint, and that the idea of organisational stratification today constitutes a different breeding ground within which complexity issues are raised. The various approaches of complexity in biological systems are captured in terms of two different styles, universalism and (weak and strong) constructivism, between which hybrid forms exist. (shrink)

Within biology and in society, living creatures have long been described using metaphors of machinery and computation: ‘bioengineering’, ‘genes as code’ or ‘biological chassis’. This paper builds on Lakoff and Johnson’s argument that such language mechanisms shape how we understand the world. I argue that the living machines metaphor builds upon a certain perception of life entailing an idea of radical human control of the living world, looking back at the historical preconditions for this metaphor. I discuss how design is (...) perceived to enable us to shape natural beings to our will, and consider ethical, epistemological and ontological implications of the prevalence of this metaphor, focusing on its use within synthetic biology. I argue that we urgently need counter-images to the dominant metaphor of living machines and its implied control and propose that artworks can provide such counter-images through upsetting the perception of life as controllable. This is argued through discussion of artworks by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, by Tarsh Bates and by Ai Hasegawa, which in different ways challenge mechanistic assumptions through open-ended engagement with the strangeness and messiness of life. (shrink)

Recalling the title of Yoxen’s classical paper on the influence of Schrödinger’s book, I analyze the role that the work of H. Pattee might have played, if any, in the development of Biosemiotics. I take his 1969 paper “How does a molecule become a message?” (Developmental Biology Supplement) as a first target due to several circumstances that make it especially salient. On the one hand, even if Pattee has obviously developed further his ideas on later papers, the significance of this (...) one springs out right from the title, the journal and date of publication and, of course, its content. On the other, this paper in particular has been somehow rediscovered recently and not only within the frame of biosemiotics (eg, in history and philosophy of biology by E.F. Keller). Following the parallelism with Yoxen’s perspective, I contend that Pattee’s work was relatively influential with respect to a good amount of attempts to rethink living systems within theoretical biology around the 70s. This influence diminished together with the decay or even collapse of those attempts under the impact of molecular biology as it was being developed those years. Eventually, Pattee’s work has been taken up again. Notwithstanding, it is quite clear that Pattee himself was not intending to contribute specifically to Biosemiotics and that he was probably unaware of any such discipline, at least until recently. Then, we should as well ask (as Yoxen wonders with respect to Schrödinger) to which extent Pattee’s influence has been a direct one or rather an indication of the relevance of his ideas and the resonance of his hypotheses with those of biosemiotics. For this task I will sketch a few points of convergence and divergence and examine the work of some authors who either address directly this issue or have contributed significantly to build up the history of Biosemiotics. (shrink)

The present account aims to contribute to a better characterization of the state and the dynamics of embryological knowledge at the dawn of the molecular revolution in biology. In this study, Albert Dalcq (1893-1973) was chosen as a representative of a generation of embryologists who found themselves at the junction of two very different approaches to the study of life: the first, focusing on global properties of organisms; the second focusing on the characterization of basic molecular constituents. Though clearly belonging (...) to the organismic tradition, Dalcq was already blending his experimental and explanatory practices with biochemical aspects by the 1930s. Principally based on published sources, the present analysis focuses on the conceptual definitions, modifications and interrelations on which Dalcq's explanation of development rested. Among these are variant process concepts such as gradients and fields, which are often thought to have strongly holistic implications. I will argue that Dalcq's version of these concepts was compatible with a more reductionist treatment of embryos than was accepted by most embryologists as late as the 1950s, pointing to some extent toward the recent molecular characterization of gradients by molecular geneticists such as Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Moreover, I will show how the embryological research program of Dalcq and his pupil Jean Brachet has been largely instrumental in the development of molecular biology in Belgium. (shrink)

Collecting, comparing, and computing molecular sequences are among the most prevalent practices in contemporary biological research. They represent a specific way of producing knowledge. This paper explores the historical development of these practices, focusing on the work of Margaret O. Dayhoff, Richard V. Eck, and Robert S. Ledley, who produced the first computer-based collection of protein sequences, published in book format in 1965 as the Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure. While these practices are generally associated with the rise of (...) molecular evolution in the 1960s, this paper shows that they grew out of research agendas from the previous decade, including the biochemical investigation of the relations between the structures and function of proteins and the theoretical attempt to decipher the genetic code. It also shows how computers became essential for the handling and analysis of sequence data. Finally, this paper reflects on the relationships between experimenting and collecting as two distinct "ways of knowing" that were essential for the transformation of the life sciences in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Collecting, comparing, and computing molecular sequences are among the most prevalent practices in contemporary biological research. They represent a specific way of producing knowledge. This paper explores the historical development of these practices, focusing on the work of Margaret O. Dayhoff, Richard V. Eck, and Robert S. Ledley, who produced the first computer-based collection of protein sequences, published in book format in 1965 as the Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure. While these practices are generally associated with the rise of (...) molecular evolution in the 1960s, this paper shows that they grew out of research agendas from the previous decade, including the biochemical investigation of the relations between the structures and function of proteins and the theoretical attempt to decipher the genetic code. It also shows how computers became essential for the handling and analysis of sequence data. Finally, this paper reflects on the relationships between experimenting and collecting as two distinct “ways of knowing” that were essential for the transformation of the life sciences in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper proposes an integrated-structure notion of interlevel emergence, from a dynamic relational ontological perspective. First, I will argue that only the individualist essentialism of atomistic metaphysics can block the possibility of interlevel emergence. Then I will show that we can make sense of emergence by recognizing the formation of structures of transformative and interdependent causal relations in the generation and development of a particular class of mereological complexes called integrated systems. Finally, I shall argue that even though the emergent (...) structural attributes of such systems are not micro-determined nor micro-reducible, they can still be accounted for by an interlevel integrative neo-mechanistic form of explanation. (shrink)

: Philosophical naturalism is ambiguous between conjoining philosophy with science or with nature understood scientifically. Reconciliation of this ambiguity is necessary but rarely attempted. Feminist science studies often endorse the former naturalism but criticize the second. Karen Barad's agential realism, however, constructively reconciles both senses. Barad then challenges traditional metaphysical naturalisms as not adequately accountable to science. She also contributes distinctively to feminist reinterpretations of objectivity as agential responsibility, and of agency as embodied, worldly, and intra-active.

Philosophical naturalism is ambiguous between conjoining philosophy with science or with nature understood scientifically. Reconciliation of this ambiguity is necessary but rarely attempted. Feminist science studies often endorse the former naturalism but criticize the second. Karen Barad's agential realism, however, constructively reconciles both senses. Barad then challenges traditional metaphysical naturalisms as not adequately accountable to science. She also contributes distinctively to feminist reinterpretations of objectivity as agential responsibility, and of agency as embodied, worldly, and intra-active.

Resumo: A partir de uma análise sobre a utilização das biotecnologias médicas, este artigo pretende compreender como a disseminação de uma lógica e um discurso "informacional", na área de saúde, mascaram as intervenções médicas efetuadas no corpo humano. Argumenta-se que frequentemente as práticas biotecnológicas são tratadas como meras relações linguísticas, como se não fossem operações de carne e sangue realizadas nos corpos. Para abordar a forma como essa lógica se processa, será feita, neste texto, uma breve discussão sobre como as (...) disputas em torno do que são, e como operam os genes, acabam por reforçar um paradigma informacional, ainda que tal resolução não seja amparada pelas evidências empíricas, mas em metáforas bem-sucedidas.: Starting with an analysis of the use of medical biotechnology, this article aims to understand how medical interventions in the human body are masked by a certain logic and by an "informational" discourse on health care. We argue that biotechnological practices are often treated as linguistic relations, as if they were not flesh and blood operations on bodies. To address how this logic is processed, we discuss how disputes over the nature and functioning of genes end up strengthening an informational paradigm that is not based on empirical evidence, but rather on successful metaphors. (shrink)

ArgumentWhat does “life” become at a moment when biological inquiry proceeds by manufacturing biological artifacts and systems? In this article, I juxtapose two radically different communities, synthetic biologists and Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef crafters (HCCR). Synthetic biology is a decade-old research initiative that seeks to merge biology with engineering and experimental research with manufacture. The HCCR is a distributed venture of three thousand craftspeople who cooperatively fabricate a series of yarn and plastic coral reefs to draw attention to the menace (...) climate change poses to the Great Barrier and other reefs. Interpreting these two groups alongside one another, I suggest that for both, manufacturing biological artifacts advances their understandings of biology: in a rhetorical loop, they build new biological things in order to understand the things they are making. The resulting fabrications condense scientific and folk theories about “life” and also undo “life” as a coherent analytic object. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of technoscience have long argued that it is vital that we question biomedical and scientific claims to an immaterial and disembodied objectivity, and also, more specifically, that we disable the conception of medical visualising technologies as neutral or transparent conduits to the “fact” of the body. In this paper we suggest that corporeal feminism is well situated to provide such a critique. Feminist phenomenologists over the past decade have theorised embodiment in a number of critical ways, many deriving (...) concepts from the work of Merleau-Ponty, and emphasising the pliability and diversity of our body images and corporeal schematics. Others such as Elizabeth Wilson, Cathy Waldby and Drew Leder have considered the interdependence of our inner biology or viscerality with the socio-cultural inscriptions of embodiment. In this paper, these adaptations of phenomenology, and their account of the specificity and depth of embodied being, will be discussed and applied to the discourse of biomedicine and the apparatus of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation"([1948], 1970) Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the (...) 1960s and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

In 1997, five decades after the publication of the landmark Hempel-Oppenheim article "Studies in the Logic of Explanation" Wesley Salmon published Causality and Explanation, a book that re-addresses the issue of scientific explanation. He provided an overview of the basic approaches to scientific explanation, stressed their weaknesses, and offered novel insights. However, he failed to mention Mary Hesse's approach to the topic and analyze her standpoint. This essay brings front and center Hesse's approach to scientific explanation formulated in the 1960s (...) and argues that rereading Hesse's account one can overcome the criticisms addressed towards another influential theory of explanation that of Bas van Fraassen's. Furthermore, it could bring the traditional philosophy of science into a fruitful conversation with science and technology studies and gender studies in science, technology and medicine. (shrink)

Genes are often described by biologists using metaphors derived from computa- tional science: they are thought of as carriers of information, as being the equivalent of ‘‘blueprints’’ for the construction of organisms. Likewise, cells are often characterized as ‘‘factories’’ and organisms themselves become analogous to machines. Accordingly, when the human genome project was initially announced, the promise was that we would soon know how a human being is made, just as we know how to make airplanes and buildings. Impor- tantly, (...) modern proponents of Intelligent Design, the latest version of creationism, have exploited biologists’ use of the language of information and blueprints to make their spurious case, based on pseudoscientific concepts such as ‘‘irreducible complexity’’ and on flawed analogies between living cells and mechanical factories. However, the living organ- ism = machine analogy was criticized already by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In line with Hume’s criticism, over the past several years a more nuanced and accurate understanding of what genes are and how they operate has emerged, ironically in part from the work of computational scientists who take biology, and in particular developmental biology, more seriously than some biologists seem to do. In this article we connect Hume’s original criticism of the living organism = machine analogy with the modern ID movement, and illustrate how the use of misleading and outdated metaphors in science can play into the hands of pseudoscientists. Thus, we argue that dropping the blueprint and similar metaphors will improve both the science of biology and its understanding by the general public. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that the practice of bioethics in the area of biology and genetics has been hampered by the lack of an accurate and appropriate metaphor. Beginning with previous metaphors that have compared the genome with a static blueprint or “book of life”, I develop a dynamic metaphor that is compatible with our present understanding of the role of genetics in biology. The resulting metaphor is not only an accurate representation of current biology but of particular use (...) to bioethicists and non-biologists in general. (shrink)

‘‘Adaptive radiation’’ is an evocative metaphor for explosive evolutionary divergence, which for over 100 years has given a powerful heuristic to countless scientists working on all types of organisms at all phylogenetic levels. However, success has come at the price of making ‘‘adaptive radiation’’ so vague that it can no longer reflect the detailed results yielded by powerful new phylogeny-based techniques that quantify continuous adaptive radiation variables such as speciation rate, phylogenetic tree shape, and morphological diversity. Attempts to shoehorn the (...) results of these techniques into categorical ‘‘adaptive radiation: yes/no’’ schemes lead to reification, in which arbitrary quantitative thresholds are regarded as real. Our account of the life cycle of metaphors in science suggests that it is time to exchange the spent metaphor for new concepts that better represent the full range of diversity, disparity, and speciation rate across all of life. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

“Captured” in the hands of twenty-first-century structural biologists, “life itself” is taking on new form. The current trend towards molecularization in the life sciences is revealing that “life itself” is denser than the one-dimensional logic of a genetic code: it has a multidimensional material body, and its molecular structures, forces, and movements carry out the regulated work of the cell. Researchers are no longer satisfied reducing the organism to the coding systems embedded in computer software ; the organism now has (...) a mechanical architecture, and its molecular mechanisms have come to resemble the many kinds of machines with which we currently live and work. These include electronic circuitry, and the levers, switches, hinges, springs, locks, and clamps of modern day mechanical devices. These are the molecular machines that populate what is fast becoming the factory-floor of the cell... (shrink)

Biomedicine is typically defined as the branch of medicine that is based on the principles of biology and biochemistry. A central tenet for biomedicine is the notion of disease and therapeutic specificity, i.e. the idea of tailored treatments for discrete disorders underpinned by specific pathologies. The present paper is concerned with how notions of disease and therapeutic specificity guide biomedical reasoning. To that end, the author proposes a model – the specificity triad – that draws on late philosopher and physician (...) Ludwik Fleck’s concept of “style of thought” to offer a frame for investigating the intricate process through which links between disorders, mechanisms, and therapeutics are established by biomedicine. Next by applying the specificity triad model to scrutinize research efforts in two discrete areas of medicine—psychiatry and regenerative medicine—this paper seeks to stimulate pertinent discussions in and about biomedicine. These include discussions on the ambiguous epistemic status of psychiatry within contemporary biomedicine, as well as the relationship between developmental biology — historically relatively disjointed from biomedical enterprise — and the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine. (shrink)

It is frequently said that biology is emerging from a long phase of reductionism. It would be certainly more correct to say that biologists are abandoning a certain form of reductionism. We describe this past form, and the experiments which challenged the previous vision. To face the difficulties which were met, biologists use a series of concepts and metaphors - pleiotropy, tinkering, epigenetics - the ambiguity of which masks the difficulties, instead of solving them. In a similar way, the word (...) “post-genomics” has different meanings, depending upon who uses it. Which of these meanings will become dominant in the future is an open question. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty, la passivité et la scienceJe soutiens qu’il y a plus en jeu dans l’intérêt de Merleau-Ponty pour la science qu’une simple dialectique entre disciplines. C’est parce que son évolutionméthodologique le conduit à trouver dans la science un moyen spécifique d’approfondir ses recherches ontologiques, que celle-ci hante de plus en plus sa philosophie. En effet, dans le chapitre « champ phénoménal » de la Phénoménologie de la perception, il est possible de rapprocher certains aspects de son défi méthodologique et l’idée (...) selon laquelle la philosophie tient son origine d’une conscience réflexive, active et autonome dans son ensemble. Je lie cela aux problèmes de la passivité de telle sorte que la science apparaisse comme une façon de saisir la réflexion non pas comme autonome, mais comme une opération du champ phénomenal, comme réflexion radicale. Grâce à l’analyse critique des recherches récentes sur le génome, je montre ensuite commentl’embryologie peut nous aider à conceptualiser la vie comme un champ phénoménal, c’est-à-dire comme un champ qui engendre ce même genre d’opérations qui caractérisent aussi la phénoménalité. Cela nous conduit à voir la phénomenologie non plus comme une réflexion de survol sur les phénomènes, mais plutôt comme une réflexion radicale qui se realise à travers un phénoménalité plus « ancienne », qui appartient à la vie ellemême. Cela ouvre également des perspectives sur quelques problèmes difficiles de la dernière philosophie de Merleau-Ponty; ceux-ci sont abordés d’une manière nouvelle, grâce au rapprochement de sa première philosophie et de la science actuelle.Merleau-Ponty, la passività e la scienzaRitengo che, nell’interesse che Merleau-Ponty rivolge alla scienza, vi sia in gioco qualcosa di più del semplice confronto dialettico con un’altra disciplina. Il motivo è che il suo impegno metodologico finisce per individuare nella scienza una speciale risorsa per l’indagine di quelle profonde questioni ontologiche che investono in modo crescente la sua filosofia. Intendo argomentare tale ipotesi, connettendo dei passi del capitolo di Fenomenologia della percezione “Il campo fenomenico” con la sua sfida metodologica all’idea che la filosofia abbia inizio da una coscienza riflessiva autonoma e interamente attiva. Collego questo alle questioni della passività in un modo che rivela la scienza come una potenziale risorsa per comprendere la riflessione non come autonoma, bensì in quanto operazione di e nel campo fenomenico – come riflessione radicale. Poi, attraverso un’analisi critica dei risultati recenti riguardanti il DNA regolatore, mostrocome l’attuale embriologia può aiutarci a concettualizzare la vita come un campo fenomenico che implicitamente produce i tipi di operazioni rivelatrici distintive della fenomenalità. Questo ci permette di collocare la fenomenologia non semplicemente come una riflessione dall’alto sui fenomeni, ma come una riflessione radicale che opera grazie ad una “più antica” fenomenalità della vita. Questo ci fornisce degli spunti su alcune difficili questioni nella filosofia dell’ultimo Merleau-Ponty, suggerendo un nuovo percorso che giunga a queste combinando il primo periodo della sua filosofia con la scienza recente. (shrink)

The comparison between natural evolution and the action of a tinkerer has become highly popular since its reintroduction by François Jacob at the end of the 1970s. It has been used as a weapon against the existence of an “intelligent design” as well as a way for synthetic biologists to promote their ambitious projects. I will describe the complex history of this metaphor, and examine its pertinence. Whereas Darwin considered it as a way to describe how evolution proceeded, Jacob linked (...) it with a description of the imperfections of organisms, while Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin criticized what they called the “Panglossian” vision of most evolutionary biologists. The distinction between the work of engineers and that of tinkerers is not obvious. There are limits to the process of evolution, but their alleged description so far reflects the limits of knowledge on the part of evolutionary biologists more than the existence of true barriers to the evolutionary process. And, in their work, synthetic biologists crucially need the optimizing action of natural selection. To give a definition of synthetic biology is no easy task; the false distinction drawn between the work of synthetic biologists and the action of evolution is of no help. (shrink)

This essay recognizes that the interactions that define medical care are problematic and that narrative is invoked to overcome these strains. Being grounded in science, medicine, too, might be influenced by a particular world-view that arose in the natural philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. If narrative responds to this sort of medicine, it may retain traces of this mindset. A feminist approach responds to this viewpoint and may used beneficially to analyze both the story of medicine and the stories within (...) medicine. Tensions discussed from this perspective are those between sickness and health and those between patient and provider; also questioned are suitable form(s) of narrative and whose narratives are valued. Suggestions for broadening narrative to address these issues include letting the body speak for itself, overcoming the power differential in the patient/provider interaction and using standpoints to foster a more equal and just medical system. (shrink)

The NeuroGenderings project is reminiscent of an interdisciplinary program called Critical Neuroscience. But the steps towards a feminist/queer Critical Neuroscience are complicated by the problematic ways in which critical neuroscientists conceive of their critical practices. They suggest that we work and talk across disciplines as if neuroscientists were from Mars and social scientists from Venus, assigning the latter to the traditional feminine role of assuaging conflict. This article argues that brain science studies scholars need to clarify how we want to (...) frame our critical practices—a critique of what and for whom?—and promote interdisciplinarity. The challenge is to articulate a critical stance that could not be collapsed into the all-encompassing claims of neuroscience, Critical Neuroscience included. I suggest we shift focus: from enhanced communication to the study of controversies (but also non-controversies, failed controversies, etc.) and conflicts. I explore the productiveness of this shift through two examples: the non-controversial notion of brain plasticity, and the controversial question of whether gender identity formation in intersex people is a function of their brain or their genitals. Socializing neuroscience with insights from gender and science studies is good; highlighting the conflicting dimensions of social life in the same gesture is even better. (shrink)

I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

This article takes as its starting point and its main problematic the status of evolution as a ‘sterile belief’ in contemporary technoscientific culture. Focusing in particular on the role of evolution across the boundaries of art and science in the contexts of artificial life and transgenic engineering, it offers a critique of the belief in evolutionary possibility as an abstract process. The lack of what François Jacob refers to as a dialogue between the possible and the actual is seen to (...) account for the sterility of evolutionary possibility and for its status as myth. In particular, evolutionary possibility recalls the myth of metamorphoses, the conservatism of which is demonstrated in an analysis of two art/science works - Galápagos by Karl Sims and Genesis by Eduardo Kac. Lacking a dialogue with the actual, metamorphic evolutionary possibility here becomes self-referential and produces nothing new. Rather than a rejection of evolution per se, this article takes up Jacob’s critique of its over-extension by showing how this operates in two works representing the fields of artificial life and transgenesis respectively. (shrink)

A discussion is going on in cognitive science about the use of representations to explain how intelligent behavior is generated. In the traditional view, an organism is thought to incorporate representations. These provide an internal model that is used by the organism to instruct the motor apparatus so that the adaptive and anticipatory characteristics of behavior come about. So-called interactionists claim that this representational specification of behavior raises more problems than it solves. In their view, the notion of internal representational (...) models is to be dispensed with. Instead, behavior is to be explained as the intricate interaction between an embodied organism and the specific make up of an environment. The problem with a non-representational interactive account is that it has severe difficulties with anticipatory, future oriented behavior. The present paper extends the interactionist conceptual framework by drawing on ideas derived from the study of morphogenesis. This extended interactionist framework is based on an analysis of anticipatory behavior as a process which involves multiple spatio-temporal scales of neural, bodily and environmental dynamics. This extended conceptual framework provides the outlines for an explanation of anticipatory behavior without involving a representational specification of future goal states. (shrink)

This paper presents a collaboration between social scientists and a chemist exploring the promises for new therapy development at the intersection between synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Drawing from ethnographic studies of laboratories and a recorded discussion between the three authors, we interrogate the metaphors that underpin what Mackenzie has identified as a recursive relationship in the iconography of the life sciences and its infrastructure. Focusing specifically on the use of gene editing techniques in synthetic biology and bio-nanotechnology, we focus our (...) analysis on the key metaphors of ‘evolutionary life as hodge-podge’ within which ‘cutting’ of DNA and the ‘sticking’ and ‘binding’ of engineered particles to proteins can be performed by researchers in laboratory settings. Taken together, we argue that these metaphors are consequential for understanding metaphors of life-as-machine and the prevalence of notions of ‘engineering life’. Exploring the ways in which notions of cutting, targeting and life as an evolutionary hodgepodge prefigure a more contingent notion of engineering and synthesis we close by considering the interpretive implications for ethnomethodological approaches to contemporary life science research. (shrink)

Drawing from contemporary social science studies on the shifting regime of research governance, this paper extends the literature by utilizing a metaphoric image—research is a game—observed in a field engagement with 82 American, British, and Danish crop and plant scientists. It theorizes respondents’ thinking and practices by placing the rules of the research game in dynamic and interactive tension between the scientific, social, and political-economic contingencies that generate opportunities or setbacks. Scientists who play the game exploit opportunities and surmount setbacks (...) by adopting strategies and reinventing tactics in order to maximize their winnings and to minimize their losses. Winners become superstars who decree what is open, closed, or doable science for the majority of the scientific community. (shrink)

The issue of what is proper to nature, or life itself, is central to critical accounts of biomedicine and its complex interrelations with social, political and economic forces. These engagements, namely biopolitical accounts of medical practices and ethical-political critiques of biomedical discourse, grapple with the indistinction between the political and biological that biomedicine enacts. Making a significant contribution to both literatures, Ed Cohen’s A Body Worth Defending argues that the emergence of the concept of biological immunity signals the entry of (...) politics into life itself and, as such, constitutes a concrete example of biopolitics. This article examines Cohen’s account of how the political becomes biological, and the view of life it assumes. Seeking to open up the question of biology, it draws on the work of Georges Canguilhem, and New Materialist accounts of matter–meaning entanglement, to offer a reading of knowledge and life, or politics and biology, as ontologically entangled. (shrink)

Some biologists now argue in favour of a pluralistic approach to plant activities, understandable both from the classical perspective of physiological mechanisms and that of the biology of behaviour involving choices and decisions in relation to the environment. However, some do not hesitate to go further, such as plant “neurobiologists” or philosophers who today defend an intelligence, a mind or even a plant consciousness in a renewed perspective of these terms. To what extent can we then adhere to pluralism in (...) the study of plant behaviour? How does this pluralism in the study and explanation of plant behaviour fit into, or even build itself up, in a broader history of science? Is it a revolutionary way of rethinking plant behaviour in the twenty-first century or is it an epistemological extension of an older attitude? By proposing a synthesis of the question of plant behaviour by selected elements of the history of botany, the objective is to show that the current plant biology is not unified on the question of behaviour, but that its different tendencies are in fact part of a long botanical tradition with contrasting postures. Two axes that are in fact historically linked will serve as a common thread. 1. Are there several ways of understanding or conceiving plant behaviour within plant sciences and their epistemology? 2. Can the behaviour of a plant be considered in the same way as that of an animal? The working hypothesis defended in this article consists in showing that the current opposition between growth, development and reductionist physiology on the one hand and the biology of behaviour involving sensitivity and choices in plant activity on the other hand has been built up through the history of botany. (shrink)

Genetic information is becoming increasingly used in modern life, extending beyond medicine to familial history, forensics and more. Following this expansion of use, the effect of genetic information on people’s identity and ultimately people’s quality of life is being explored in a host of different disciplines. While a multidisciplinary approach is commendable and necessary, there is the potential for the multidisciplinarity to produce conceptual misconnection. That is, while experts in one field may understand their use of a term like ‘gene’, (...) ‘identity’ or ‘information’ for experts in another field, the same term may link to a distinctly different concept. These conceptual misconnections not only increase inefficiency in complex organisational practices, but can also have important ethical, legal and social consequences. This paper comes at the problem of conceptual misconnection by clarifying different uses of the terms ‘gene’, ‘identity’ and ‘information’. I start by looking at three different conceptions of the gene; the Instrumental, the Nominal and the Postgenomic Molecular. Secondly, a taxonomy of four different concepts of identity is presented; Numeric, Character, Group and Essentialised, and their use is clarified. A general concept of Information is introduced, and finally three distinct kinds of information are described. I then introduce Concept Creep as an ethical problem that arises from conceptual misconnections. The primary goal of this paper is to reduce the potential for conceptual misconnection when discussing genetic identity and genetic information. This is complimented by three secondary goals—1) to clarify what a conceptual misconnection is, 2) to explain why clarity of use is particularly important to discussions of genes, identity and information and 3) to show how concept creep between different uses of genetic identity and genetic information can have important ethical outcomes. (shrink)