Organization in Biology

ISBN-13: 9783031389672 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023

Opis

This open access book assesses the prospects of (re)adopting organization as a pivotal concept in biology. It shows how organization can nourish biological thinking and practice, by reconnecting with the idea of biology as the science of organized systems. The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art picture of the characterizations and uses of the concept of organization in both biological science and philosophy of biology. It also deals with a variety of themes – including evolution, organogenesis, heredity, cognition and ecology – with respect to which the concept of organization can guide the elaboration of original models and new experimental protocols. It will be of interest to biologists and scholars working in philosophy of science alike. 

Spis treści

TABLE OF CONTENT

I. Historical and Conceptual Foundations

1. ‘Organization’: Its Conceptual History, Definition and Relationship to Other

Fundamental Biological Concepts

Georg Toepfer

2. Varieties of Organicism – A Metacritique?

Charles T. Wolfe

3. Organization as Presupposition? On the Epistemological Implications in the

Attitudinal Stance

Gertrudis Van de Vijver

4. ‘Dogmatic’ vs ‘Legitimate’ Organicism: Organization as Explanans and Explanandum

in Biology

Daniel J. Nicholson

5. Does Organicism Really Need Organization?

Olivier Sartenaer

II. Origins of Life

6. A Structuralist Revival for Studies on the Origins of Life and Developmental

Evolution

Johannes Jaeger & Wim Hordijk

7. On the Evolutionary Development of Biological Organization from Complex Prebiotic

Chemistry

Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo & Alvaro Moreno

III. Development

8. An Organizational View on Development, with a Focus on Life Cycles

Leonardo Bich & Derek Skilling

9. Modelling Mammary Organogenesis from Biological First Principles: Cells and

Organization of Constraints

Ana Soto & Maël Montévil

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IV. Evolution

10. Extended Heredity and the Return of Organizational Thinking in Evolutionary Biology

Gaëlle Pontarotti

11. Collaboration and the Evolution of Biological Complexity: An Organizational

Perspective

Argyris Arnellos & Fred Keijzer

12. Organisms: Between a Kantian Approach and a Liberal Approach

Philippe Huneman

V. Ecology

13. Individuating Ecosystems by Ascribing Functions to their Parts

Victor Lefèvre & Charbel El-Hani

14. Ecological Functions and Environmental Ethics

Nei Nunes-Neto & Felipe Lima

VI. Theoretical Biology

15. Studying Functional Organization with Systems Theory

Olaf Wolkenhauer

16. Organizational Principles of Autonomy

Bernd Rosslenbroich

17. On Taking an Organizational Approach to Cognition

Cliff Hooker

18. Biological Organization at the Crossroads between Conservation and Innovation

Maël Montévil, Matteo Mossio, Stuart Kauffman

O autorze

Matteo Mossio is a philosopher of biology. He is chargé de recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and full member of the IHPST, in Paris, France. Matteo Mossio works mainly in the philosophy and theory of biological autonomy, and has focused on concepts as organization, agency, function, emergence, identity and heredity. He published numerous articles in international philosophical and scientific journals and, in 2015, he coauthored with Alvaro Moreno a full monograph on autonomy, which received substantial coverage in the literature. Matteo Mossio teaches in the Philosophy Program of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne.