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Author: Andrea Borghini
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781472584687
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Over the last fifty years, biology and life sciences have suggested many multifaceted challenges for metaphysics. The Metaphysics of Life Sciences is the first study of these challenges. This systematic study focuses on classical metaphysical debates, such as the divide between structural realism and antirealism, and the disputes between monists and pluralists, and essentialism and anti-essentialism. Divided into three parts, it covers amorphous reality, out of which life, organisms, and biological individuals are singled out and the means by which living entities are sorted, closely examining how entities are organized in a whole and whether bioengineered entities should be included in that whole or rather considered as artificial kinds. The final part of this study looks at microevolution, macroevolution, and epigenetic, behavioural, and cultural evolutions. By exploring the main issues that recent developments of biology and life sciences pose to metaphysicians, The Metaphysics of Life Sciences reveals the potential influence of this fast-growing branch of philosophy over classical fields such as metaphysics.
Author: Andrea Borghini
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781472584687
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Over the last fifty years, biology and life sciences have suggested many multifaceted challenges for metaphysics. The Metaphysics of Life Sciences is the first study of these challenges. This systematic study focuses on classical metaphysical debates, such as the divide between structural realism and antirealism, and the disputes between monists and pluralists, and essentialism and anti-essentialism. Divided into three parts, it covers amorphous reality, out of which life, organisms, and biological individuals are singled out and the means by which living entities are sorted, closely examining how entities are organized in a whole and whether bioengineered entities should be included in that whole or rather considered as artificial kinds. The final part of this study looks at microevolution, macroevolution, and epigenetic, behavioural, and cultural evolutions. By exploring the main issues that recent developments of biology and life sciences pose to metaphysicians, The Metaphysics of Life Sciences reveals the potential influence of this fast-growing branch of philosophy over classical fields such as metaphysics.
Author: Anthony J. Fisichella
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide Limited
ISBN: 9780875422299
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Author: David L. Hull
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791402115
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
This critical collection of essays represents the best of the best when it comes to philosophy of biology. Many chapters treat evolution as a biological phenomenon, but the author is more generally concerned with science itself. Present-day science, particularly current views on systematics and biological evolution are investigated. The aspects of these sciences that are relevant to the general analysis of selection processes are presented, and they also serve to exemplify the general characteristics exhibited by science since its inception.
Author: John Dupré
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100902180X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
This Element is an introduction to the metaphysics of biology, a very general account of the nature of the living world. The first part of the Element addresses more traditionally philosophical questions - whether biological systems are reducible to the properties of their physical parts, causation and laws of nature, substantialist and processualist accounts of life, and the nature of biological kinds. The second half will offer an understanding of important biological entities, drawing on the earlier discussions. This division should not be taken too seriously, however: the topics in both parts are deeply interconnected. Although this does not claim to be a scientific work, it does aim to be firmly grounded in our best scientific knowledge; it is an exercise in naturalistic metaphysics. Its most distinctive feature is that argues throughout for a view of living systems as processes rather than things or, in the technical philosophical sense, substances.
Author: Francesco Vitale
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438468865
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Analyzes Derrida’s 1975 seminar “La vie la mort” as a deconstruction of biology with relevance to his work more broadly. In Biodeconstruction, Francesco Vitale demonstrates the key role that the question of life plays in Jacques Derrida’s work. In the seminar La vie la mort (1975), Derrida engages closely with the life sciences, especially biology and evolution theory. Connecting this line of thought to his analysis of cybernetics in Of Grammatology, Vitale shows how Derrida develops a notion of biological life as itself a sort of text that is necessarily open onto further articulations and grafts. This sets the stage for the deconstruction of the traditional opposition between life and death, conceiving of death as an internal condition of the constitution of the living rather than being the opposite of life. It also provides the basis for the deconstruction of the rigidly deterministic concept of the genetic program, an insight that anticipates recent achievements of biological research in epigenetics and sexual reproduction. Finally, Vitale argues that this framework can enrich our understanding of Derrida’s late work devoted to political issues, connecting his use of the autoimmunitarian lexicon to the theory of cellular suicide in biology. Francesco Vitale is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Salerno, Italy. He is the author of The Last Fortress of Metaphysics: Jacques Derrida and the Deconstruction of Architecture, also published by SUNY Press, and the author and editor of several books in Italian on Derrida and contemporary French philosophy. Mauro Senatore is a British Academy Fellow at Durham University in the United Kingdom and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary French Philosophy at the Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. He is the author of Germs of Death: The Problem of Genesis in Jacques Derrida, also published by SUNY Press.
Author: Matthew Slater
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199363226
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The question of the proper role of metaphysics in philosophy of science is both significant and contentious. The last few decades have seen considerable engagement with philosophical projects aptly described as "the metaphysics of science:" inquiries into natural laws and properties, natural kinds, causal relations, and dispositions. At the same time, many metaphysicians have begun moving in the direction of more scientifically-informed ("scientistic" or "naturalistic") metaphysics. And yet many philosophers of science retain a deep suspicion about the significance of metaphysical investigations into science. This volume of new essays explores a broadly methodological question: what role should metaphysics play in our philosophizing about science? These new essays, written by leading philosophers of science, address this question both through ground-level investigations of particular issues in the metaphysics of science and by more general methodological inquiry.
Author: James G. Lennox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521659765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
In addition to being one of the world's most influential philosophers, Aristotle can also be credited with the creation of both the science of biology and the philosophy of biology. He was the first thinker to treat the investigations of the living world as a distinct inquiry with its own special concepts and principles. This book focuses on a seminal event in the history of biology - Aristotle's delineation of a special branch of theoretical knowledge devoted to the systematic investigation of animals. Aristotle approached the creation of zoology with the tools of subtle and systematic philosophies of nature and of science that were then carefully tailored to the investigation of animals. The papers collected in this 2001 volume, written by a pre-eminent figure in the field of Aristotle's philosophy and biology, examine Aristotle's approach to biological inquiry and explanation, his concepts of matter, form and kind, and his teleology.
Author: Michael T. Ghiselin
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791434673
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
In explaining his individuality thesis, Michael T. Ghiselin provides extended discussions of such philosophical topics as definition, the reality of various kinds of groups, and how we classify traits and processes. He develops and applies the implications for general biology and other sciences and makes the case that a better understanding of species and of classification in general puts biologists and paleontologists in a much better position to understand nature in general, and such processes as extinction in particular.
Author: Andrew S. Reynolds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108945015
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223
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Book Description
Covering a range of metaphors from a diverse field of sciences, from cell and molecular biology to evolution, ecology, and biomedicine, Understanding Metaphors in the Life Sciences explores the positive and negative implications of the widespread use of metaphors in the biological and life sciences. From genetic codes, programs, and blueprints, to cell factories, survival of the fittest, the tree of life, selfish genes, and ecological niches, to genome editing with CRISPR's molecular scissors, metaphors are ubiquitous and vital components of the modern life sciences. But how exactly do metaphors help scientists to understand the objects they study? How can they mislead both scientists and laypeople alike? And what should we all understand about the implications of science's reliance on metaphorical speech and thought for objective knowledge and adequate public policy informed by science? This book will literally help you to better understand the metaphorical dimensions of science.
Author: Christian Emden
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107059631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
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Book Description
This book examines Nietzsche's philosophical naturalism both historically and philosophically, establishing a link between his discussions of nature and normativity.
