The ‘Tree of Life’ is intended to represent the pattern of evolutionary processes that result in bifurcating species lineages. Often justified in reference to Darwin’s discussions of trees, the Tree of Life has run up against numerous challenges especially in regard to prokaryote evolution. This special issue examines scientific, historical and philosophical aspects of debates about the Tree of Life, with the aim of turning these criticisms towards a reconstruction of prokaryote phylogeny and even some aspects of the standard evolutionary (...) understanding of eukaryotes. These discussions have arisen out of a multidisciplinary collaboration of people with an interest in the Tree of Life, and we suggest that this sort of focused engagement enables a practical understanding of the relationships between biology, philosophy and history. (shrink)

The volume contains studies by eleven distinguished scholars, concerning changes in ethical and religious consciousness during this important era of Western ...

In the context of scientists' reflections on genomics, we examine some fundamental issues in the emerging postgenomic discipline of systems biology. Systems biology is best understood as consisting of two streams. One, which we shall call ‘pragmatic systems biology’, emphasises large‐scale molecular interactions; the other, which we shall refer to as ‘systems‐theoretic biology’, emphasises system principles. Both are committed to mathematical modelling, and both lack a clear account of what biological systems are. We discuss the underlying issues in identifying systems (...) and how causality operates at different levels of organisation. We suggest that resolving such basic problems is a key task for successful systems biology, and that philosophers could contribute to its realisation. We conclude with an argument for more sociologically informed collaboration between scientists and philosophers. BioEssays 27:1270–1276, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

We address three fundamental questions: What does it mean for an entity to be living? What is the role of inter-organismic collaboration in evolution? What is a biological individual? Our central argument is that life arises when lineage-forming entities collaborate in metabolism. By conceiving of metabolism as a collaborative process performed by functional wholes, which are associations of a variety of lineage-forming entities, we avoid the standard tension between reproduction and metabolism in discussions of life – a tension particularly evident (...) in discussions of whether viruses are alive. Our perspective assumes no sharp distinction between life and non-life, and does not equate life exclusively with cellular or organismal status. We reach this conclusion through an analysis of the capabilities of a spectrum of biological entities, in which we include the pivotal case of viruses as well as prions, plasmids, organelles, intracellular and extracellular symbionts, unicellular and multicellular life-forms. The usual criterion for classifying many of the entities of our continuum as non-living is autonomy. This emphasis on autonomy is problematic, however, because even paradigmatic biological individuals, such as large animals, are dependent on symbiotic associations with many other organisms. These composite individuals constitute the metabolic wholes on which selection acts. Finally, our account treats cooperation and competition not as polar opposites but as points on a continuum of collaboration. We suggest that competitive relations are a transitional state, with multi-lineage metabolic wholes eventually outcompeting selfish competitors, and that this process sometimes leads to the emergence of new types or levels of wholes. Our view of life as a continuum of variably structured collaborative systems leaves open the possibility that a variety of forms of organized matter – from chemical systems to ecosystems – might be usefully understood as living entities. (shrink)

Multilevel research strategies characterize contemporary molecular inquiry into biological systems. We outline conceptual, methodological, and explanatory dimensions of these multilevel strategies in microbial ecology, systems biology, protein research, and developmental biology. This review of emerging lines of inquiry in these fields suggests that multilevel research in molecular life sciences has significant implications for philosophical understandings of explanation, modeling, and representation.

Metagenomics is an emerging microbial systems science that is based on the large-scale analysis of the DNA of microbial communities in their natural environments. Studies of metagenomes are revealing the vast scope of biodiversity in a wide range of environments, as well as new functional capacities of individual cells and communities, and the complex evolutionary relationships between them. Our examination of this science focuses on the ontological implications of these studies of metagenomes and metaorganisms, and what they mean for common (...) sense and philosophical understandings of multicellularity, individuality and organism. We show how metagenomics requires us to think in different ways about what human beings are and what their relation to the microbial world is. Metagenomics could also transform the way in which evolutionary processes are understood, with the most basic relationship between cells from both similar and different organisms being far more cooperative and less antagonistic than is widely assumed. In addition to raising fundamental questions about biological ontology, metagenomics generates possibilities for powerful technologies addressed to issues of climate, health and conservation. We conclude with reflections about process-oriented versus entity-oriented analysis in light of current trends towards systems approaches. (shrink)

Understanding how scientific activities use naming stories to achieve disciplinary status is important not only for insight into the past, but for evaluating current claims that new disciplines are emerging. In order to gain a historical understanding of how new disciplines develop in relation to these baptismal narratives, we compare two recently formed disciplines, systems biology and genomics, with two earlier related life sciences, genetics and molecular biology. These four disciplines span the twentieth century, a period in which the processes (...) of disciplinary demarcation fundamentally changed from those characteristic of the nineteenth century. We outline how the establishment of each discipline relies upon an interplay of factors that include paradigmatic achievements, technological innovation, and social formations. Our focus, however, is the baptism stories that give the new discipline a founding narrative and articulate core problems, general approaches and constitutive methods. The highly plastic process of achieving disciplinary identity is further marked by the openness of disciplinary definition, tension between technological possibilities and the ways in which scientific issues are conceived and approached, synthesis of reductive and integrative strategies, and complex social interactions. The importance – albeit highly variable – of naming stories in these four cases indicates the scope for future studies that focus on failed disciplines or competing names. Further attention to disciplinary histories could, we suggest, give us richer insight into scientific development. (shrink)

Systems biology is the rapidly growing and heavily funded successor science to genomics. Its mission is to integrate extensive bodies of molecular data into a detailed mathematical understanding of all life processes, with an ultimate view to their prediction and control. Despite its high profile and widespread practice, there has so far been almost no bioethical attention paid to systems biology and its potential social consequences. We outline some of systems biology's most important socioethical issues by contrasting the concept of (...) systems as dynamic processes against the common static interpretation of genomes. New issues arise around systems biology's capacities for in silico testing, changing cultural understandings of life, synthetic biology, and commercialization. We advocate an interdisciplinary and interactive approach that integrates social and philosophical analysis and engages closely with the science. Overall, we argue that systems biology socioethics could stimulate new ways of thinking about socioethical studies of life sciences. (shrink)

Own Yourself is "hands-on" course in ethics and morality. Its goal is to assist students to come to know who they genuinely are and who they want to become as they move into adulthood.

Philosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy (...) of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations. (shrink)

This book is the fruit of a critical inquiry into the nature and scope of Marcel's philosophie achievement. As such, it is concerned less with affixing the appropriate label (personalist or existentialist) to Marcel's thought -and with it making it stick - than with discovering the precise impulse and tenor ofhis philosophy. In the process ofthat more general inquiry, the writer found being forced upon hirn a central concept as integrating focus of Marcel's philosophie investigations. This eoneept was that of (...) the person. Gradually it emerged as a concept not only of prime importance for understanding the underlying harmony that pervades Marcel's professedly unsystematic researches, but equally as one of profound significanee for any philosophy that pretends adequately to aecount for human experienee. Furthermore, it seemed that the eoneept derived much ofthat significance from its acceptance precisely in the context of Marcel's thought. This feature ofMareel's philosophie writings alone is warrant enough for overeoming any initial embarrassment aroused in Anglo-Saxon breasts by his style. For, to speak candidly, that style is of a generation and a climate whose tastes little aecord with palates trained to a greater astringeney. Nor will Marcel's evident and unashamed coneern with life and its problems necessarily evoke a warm response in minds aceustomed to operate in an atmosphere of stricter and more aeademic reserve. (shrink)

Systems biology is the rapidly growing and heavily funded successor science to genomics. Its mission is to integrate extensive bodies of molecular data into a detailed mathematical understanding of all life processes, with an ultimate view to their prediction and control. Despite its high profile and widespread practice, there has so far been almost no bioethical attention paid to systems biology and its potential social consequences. We outline some of systems biology's most important socioethical issues by contrasting the concept of (...) systems as dynamic processes against the common static interpretation of genomes. New issues arise around systems biology's capacities for in silico testing, changing cultural understandings of life, synthetic biology, and commercialization. We advocate an interdisciplinary and interactive approach that integrates social and philosophical analysis and engages closely with the science. Overall, we argue that systems biology socioethics could stimulate new ways of thinking about socioethical studies of life sciences. (shrink)

(1972). Contemporary Schools of Metascience. Vol. I: Anglo‐Saxon Schools of Metascience; Vol. II: Continental Schools of Metascience (2nd edition, printed in one volume), Gerard Radnitzky. World Futures: Vol. 11, No. sup1, pp. 13-24.

Reports of ethical lapses in the business world have been numerous and widespread. Ethical awareness in business education has received a great deal of attention because of the number and severity of business scandals. Given Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and recent Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International’s (AACSBI) recommendations, this study examined respective websites of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulated public companies and AACSBI-accredited business schools for ethical policy statement content. The analysis was accomplished by classifying ethical expressions into (...) a framework consisting of the attributes of thematic content and focus/themes partially based on the 2004 research of Gaumnitz and Lere. Findings indicate that public companies have been diligent in presenting website ethical content that closely follows authoritative recommendations. Business schools appear not to have prioritized such disclosure to the extent done so by public companies. Although there was improvement between two samples taken in 2005 and 2007, this study provides evidence that many accredited business schools have little or no disclosed ethical expectations in their mission, vision, goals, or other similar types of statements on their websites. Additional findings provide several opportunities for future research. (shrink)

This volume explores how Catholicism began and continues to open its doors to the wider world and to other confessions in embracing ecumenism, thanks to the vision and legacy of the Second Vatican Council. It explores such themes as the twentieth century context preceding the council; parallels between Vatican II and previous councils; its distinctively pastoral character; the legacy of the council in relation to issues such as church-world dynamics, as well as to ethics, social justice, economic activity. Several chapters (...) discuss the role of women in the church before, during, and since the council. Others discern inculturation in relation to Vatican II. The book also contains a wide and original range of ecumenical considerations of the council, including by and in relation to Free Church, Reformed, Orthodox, and Anglican perspectives. Finally, it considers the Council’s ongoing promise and remaining challenges with regard to ecumenical issues, including a groundbreaking essay on the future of ecumenical dialogue by Cardinal Walter Kasper. (shrink)

This paper examines the perceived ethics of advertisers and the general public relative to three ethical concepts. Based on the survey findings, it can be concluded that with regard to the ethically-laden concepts of manipulation, exploitation, and deviousness, advertisers are perceptually as ethical as the general public. The research also clarifies some of the differences between ethics and Machiavellianism.

There is a crisis of leadership in sport. Leadership as an athletic excellence is under threat from the deepening influence of coaches on in-game decision- making. To appreciate what is being lost in this shift of responsibility, it is necessary to understand the challenge of athlete leadership. Captaincy is the quintessential on-field leadership role. However, the role of captain, and athlete leadership more widely, remains philosophically untheorized. This paper initiates a discussion of leadership in sport by providing the first normative (...) account of captaincy. Rugby union is used as a case study, as this sport preserves an especially demanding and complex form of captaincy that may provide a rough template for the revival of athlete leadership in other sports. A virtue theoretical analysis of the role is developed based on a functionalist conception of virtue. It is argued that discharging the responsibilities of such captaincy requires two key virtues: ‘sporting judgement’ and ‘responsibility’. (shrink)

Protistology, and evolutionary protistology in particular, is experiencing a golden research era. It is an extended one that can be dated back to the 1970s, which is when the molecular rebirth of microbial phylogeny began in earnest. John Archibald, a professor of evolutionary microbiology at Dalhousie University, focuses on the beautiful story of endosymbiosis in his book, John Archibald, One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the Origin of Complex Life. However, this historical narrative could be treated as (...) synecdochal of how the molecular revolution has changed evolutionary biology forever, and that is how Archibald has structured his book. I will address the encompassing theme of molecular methods in detail, but also pay careful attention to the endosymbiosis thread in its own right. (shrink)

In a seminal article, Simo Knuuttila and Anja Inkeri Lehtinen drew attention to a “curious doctrine” holding that contradictories can be true at the same temporal instant, and identified the major defenders of the doctrine as John Baconthorpe, Landolfo Caracciolo, and Hugh of Novocastro. Normann Kretzmann later asserted as fact the suggestion by Knuuttila and Inkeri Lehtinen that the doctrine comes from a misreading of a passage from Aristotle’s Physics. In fact, a study of the relevant texts reveals that (...) Hugh of Novocastro first elaborated the doctrine by building on the Scotist doctrines of synchronic contingency and simultaneous causation. As these doctrines require at the same instant of time an order of priority and posteriority between possibility and actuality, cause and effect, so, Hugh says, there must be prior and posterior different states of affairs. Landolfo Caracciolo made this doctrine notorious outside the Franciscan convent by using it in his principia debates, directly engaging the circle of Cardinal Iacopo Stefaneschi. John Baconthorpe, the first to cite the Physics passage, did not have any noticeable effect on the development of the doctrine. (shrink)

The remarks of my exciting and ebullient colleague, John King-Farlow do not clarify what I find most perplexing either in Wittgenstein’s analogy of the builders or in Rhees’ famous comments on it. Professor King-Farlow does, however, lay before us important and challenging allegations as to an incoherent or nonsensical quality of the discussion so far. Before one turns to these allegations, something should be said on behalf of Saint Augustine’s remarks in The Confessions of language-learning.

"The main and original contribution of this volume is to offer a discussion of teleology through the prism of religion, philosophy and history. The goal is to incorporate teleology within discussions across these three disciplines rather than restrict it to one as is customarily the case. The chapters cover a wide range of topics, from individual teleologies to collective ones; ideas put forward by the French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau and the Scottish philosopher David Hume, by the Anglican theologian and (...) founder of Methodism, John Wesley, and the English naturalist Charles Darwin; it criss-crosses intellectually and conceptually from a discussion of morality to that of the sacralisation of politics"--. (shrink)

This is a collection of thirteen original essays, of uniformly high quality, on various aspects of Hegel’s political thought. The contributors include younger as well as established Hegel authorities. The opening and concluding pieces are by Z. Pelczynski, who also invited and selected the contributions and served as general editor. The other contributors are John Plamenatz, J.-F. Suter, Judith Shklar, D.-H. Ilting, G. Heiman, Manfred Riedel, D. Cooper, D. P. Verene, W. H. Walsh, R. N. Berki, and Eugène Fleischmann. (...) Their collective effort contributes much to clarifying the wealth of historical, sociological, psychological and philosophical matter that is packed into Hegel’s often obscure theoretical texts on society and polity. Attention is also paid to his less theoretical writings such as The German Constitution and ‘The English Reform Bill’, which helps to clarify the relationship between these and the major theoretical treatises, part III of the Encyclopedia and, especially, the Philosophy of Right. (shrink)

Hill explains that this book “is written both for non-philosophers and for students of philosophy. It is intended to say something both about philosophy, particularly applied moral philosophy, and about the argument for vegetarianism” (p. xiv). Since vegetarianism is an important topic in applied ethics, I had high expectations of this work. However, although the writing is commendably clear, and despite the fact that it is to be welcomed as the first book to bring together and discuss at some length (...) four different arguments for adopting a vegetarian diet, this book is disappointing both by philosophical and scholarly standards. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)