In current biological and philosophical literature, the use of the terms epigenesis and epigenetics has increased tremendously. As these terms are often confused, this paper aims at clarifying the distinction between them by drawing their conceptual and historical evolutions. The evolution of the term epigenesis is situated in the context of early embryological studies. Departing from Aristotle's natural philosophy, it is shown that epigenesis gained alternating attention from the 17th century onwards, as it was introduced into neo‐classical embryology and considered to be the opposite of the preformationist tradition. Where preformation stated that the germ cells of each organism contain preformed miniature adults that unfold during development, epigenesis held that the embryo forms by successive gradual exchanges in an amorphous zygote. Although both traditions tried to explain developmental organization, religious and metaphysical arguments on the conception of embryonic matter as either active or passive determined the scope of their respective explanations. It is shown that these very arguments still underlie the use of gene‐centric metaphors in the molecular revolution of the 20th century.

When Peirce stated that 'a sign ... is something which stands for something to somebody in some respect or capacity' (Peirce 1897, in Buchler 1955: 125), he clearly stressed its relational or triadic nature: if there are 'signs of meaning in the universe' (cf. Hoffmeyer 1996), they are always signs to someone, never signs as such. If signs stand for something, they inevitably stand for something to somebody. In other words, the sign-function has to be, implicitly or explicitly, recognized by someone; systems have in some sense to 'realize' the sign-function. The Peircean sign-conception is committed to a universe populated by dynamical, 'subjective', systems, i.e., beings that have developed some kind of autonomy out of which they are able to take something as standing for something else. So, if we want to understand signifying practices in Peircean terms, it is capital to understand (i) what makes systems into systems, (ii) how their being systems leads to the capacity of realizing and/or recognizing the sign-function, (iii) whether, and to what extent, our often intuitive, human-centered understanding of the sign determines our understanding of the workings of the sign-function in other types of systems. Biosemiotics, defined as 'the study of informational, communicative and semiotic aspects of living entities and processes' (as stated by Emmeche and Hoffmeyer in the call for papers in the present issue), argues that the above questions can, and have to be, pertinently and coherently addressed for living systems in general. It incites us to transgress the borders of human sign-practices and of human-centered ways of understanding, by considering them as part of signifying practices of living systems at large. However, it doesn't relieve us from the task of understanding in what way human systems, as living systems, express, specify, and particularize the kind of'sign-logic' that is supposed to be at work in living systems. Nor does it relieve us from addressing the question

This paper analyses the actual meaning of a transcendental philosophy of biology, and does so by exploring and actualising the epistemological and metaphysical value of Kant's viewpoint on living systems. It finds inspiration in the Kantian idea of living systems intrinsically resisting objectification, but critically departs from Kant's philosophical solution in as far as it is based in a subjectivist dogmatism. It attempts to overcome this dogmatism, on the one hand by explicitly taking into account the conditions of possibility at the side of the subject, and on the other hand by embedding both the living and the knowing system into an ontology of complexly organized dynamical systems. This paper fits into the transcendental perspective in acknowledging the need to analyse the conditions of knowability, prior to the contents of what is known. But it also contributes to an expansion and an actualisation of the issue of transcendentality itself by considering the conditions of possibility at the side of the object as intrinsically linked to the conditions of possibility at the side of the subject.

The aim of this article is to clarify the meaning of a naturalistic position within philosophy of biology, against the background of an alternative view, founded on the basic insights of transcendental philosophy. It is argued that the apparently minimal and neutral constraints naturalism imposes on philosophy of science turn out to involve a quite heavily constraining metaphysics, due to the naturalism's fundamental neglect of its own perspective. Because of its intrinsic sensitivity to perspectivity and historicity, transcendental philosophy can avoid this type of hidden metaphysics.

In this article, we propose to reflect on the meaning of complexity in relation to current biology, and in particular, in relation to current systems biological developments by considering them as confronting biology with the idea of a complex part-whole determination of living systems, that is contextual as well as stratified. We attempt to trace as clearly as possible the abstract core of the idea of parts and wholes that is at stake in this contextual determination. In doing so, we have found inspiration in Kant's view on living systems. We argue that Kant's transcendental viewpoint can be relevantly actualized and extrapolated as a relational account of living systems, and will explore its ramifications starting from a multilevel view of living systems.