Everything Flows

Abstract

A crucial question for anyone willing to defend a process view of the biological world is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. Here I suggest that the "genidentity" view (suggested first by psychologist Kurt Lewin, and then further explored by philosopher Hans Reichenbach, mainly in the context of physics) can contribute decisively to this project. According to the genidentity view, the identity through time of an entity X is nothing more than the continuous connection of the states through which X goes. In this paper, I explain how the genidentity view addresses the long debated problem of what constitutes diachronic identity in the biological world. I describe the centrality of the concept of genidentity in David Hull's reflection on biological identity, and I then suggest an extension of Hull's view on the basis of recent data demonstrating the ubiquity of symbiotic interactions in the living world. Finally, using immunological interactions as a key example, I show that the genidentity view sheds light on process biology by suggesting that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological, and that the main claim of a process approach is one of priority, that is, the claim that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa.

Overflow Metabolism in Penicillium ochrochloron and Causation in Organisms

“…The view that the organism as a whole is the cause of ist organismic behavior (including physiological “behavior” like OAE) is shared by an increasing number of scientists (Boogerd et al, 2007 ; Powell and Dupre, 2009 ; Pezzulo and Levin, 2016 ; Noble, 2017 ; Nicholson and Dupre, 2018 ; Bizzarri et al, 2019 ; Noble et al, 2019 ; Brash, 2020 ; Levin, 2020 ; Verhagen et al, 2020 ). Actually this should be nothing new for a biologist studying organisms (Woodger, 1929 ; Bertalanffy, 1932 ; Wieser, 2007 ; Riedl, 2019 ).…”

Towards a Biologically Coherent Account of the Brain and How It Develops

“…As summarized by Corris (2022), "from a DST perspective, organisms can be defined as developmental processes -more precisely, life cycles -embedded within a broader developmental system containing resources for the construction of a life cycle" (p.32). This kind of framing from a processual perspective has been suggested to provide a coherent alternative to the machine conceptualization of the organism (Nicholson & Dupre, 2018) and as providing a useful framework for developmental science (van Geert & de Ruiter, 2022).…”

Snake Venom in Context: Neglected Clades and Concepts

“…Not only is this broadly relevant to the origin of novel functions via a number of pathways in which duplication plays a role, it is specifically relevant to the evolution of venom, as many important toxins are members of gene families which have expanded through duplication (Fry et al, 2009). Proteins themselves have been described as "fundamentally relational entities" (Guttinger, 2018), since they must interact with other molecules in order to effect their own functional roles-a protein in isolation is impotent. Exophysiological proteins, such as venom toxins, which interact with targets in the bodies of prey or predators (i.e., secondary organisms) vividly illustrate this point.…”