Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. I. Formal and Material Concepts of Individuality

Huneman, Philippe

doi:10.1007/s13752-014-0192-9

Cited by 26 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…the disintegration of the holobiont, seems to indicate that holobionts are not biological individuals. Criteria of biological individuality, however, are usually "inward-looking," drawing a sharp distinction between internal interconnections on the one hand and organism-environment interactions on the other; only features of the internal and the boundary that mediates the inside with the outside seem to be important for individuality (Sober 1991;Huneman 2014;Godfrey-Smith 2009;Pradeu 2010).…”

Section: Resident Microorganisms As Scaffolds Of Host Individualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Microorganisms as scaffolds of host individuality: an eco-immunity account of the holobiont

Chiu

Eberl

2016

Biol Philos

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There is currently a great debate about whether the holobiont, i.e. a multicellular host and its residential microorganisms, constitutes a biological individual. We propose that resident microorganisms have a general and important role in the individuality of the host organism, not the holobiont. Drawing upon the Equilibrium Model of Immunity (Eberl 2016), we argue that microorganisms are scaffolds of immune capacities and processes that determine the constituency and persistence of the host organism. A scaffolding perspective accommodates the contingency and heterogeneity of resident microorganisms while accounting for their necessity and unifying contributions to host individuality. In our symbiotic view of life, holobionts may not be organisms or units of selection, but macroorganisms cannot persist nor function without their scaffolding microorganisms.

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Section: Resident Microorganisms As Scaffolds Of Host Individualitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Microorganisms as scaffolds of host individuality: an eco-immunity account of the holobiont

Chiu

Eberl

2016

Biol Philos

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“…The fourth common feature induced by microbiome studies is a reconceptualization of the usual definitions of individuals worth considering as an explanans or as an explanandum by a given field. Thus, microbiome signatures are proposed to offer a novel proxy for their hosts identity, suggesting that, at least in a medico-legal context, and despite considerable philosophical debates on what defines individuals and identity over time in the first place [72,76,77], some practitioners are now tempted to equate (hence to reduce) the legal individuals to parts of their (changing) microbiomes. Such a reduction of an individual identity to aspects of its microbiome however is not the only ontological development with significant legal implications prompted by microbiome studies.…”

Section: Commonalities Across Novel Avenues Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Epistemic Revolution Induced by Microbiome Studies: An Interdisciplinary View

Bapteste

Gérard

Larose

et al. 2021

Biology

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Many separate fields and practices nowadays consider microbes as part of their legitimate focus. Therefore, microbiome studies may act as unexpected unifying forces across very different disciplines. Here, we summarize how microbiomes appear as novel major biological players, offer new artistic frontiers, new uses from medicine to laws, and inspire novel ontologies. We identify several convergent emerging themes across ecosystem studies, microbial and evolutionary ecology, arts, medicine, forensic analyses, law and philosophy of science, as well as some outstanding issues raised by microbiome studies across these disciplines and practices. An ‘epistemic revolution induced by microbiome studies’ seems to be ongoing, characterized by four features: (i) an ecologization of pre-existing concepts within disciplines, (ii) a growing interest in systemic analyses of the investigated or represented phenomena and a greater focus on interactions as their root causes, (iii) the intent to use openly multi-scalar interaction networks as an explanatory framework to investigate phenomena to acknowledge the causal effects of microbiomes, (iv) a reconceptualization of the usual definitions of which individuals are worth considering as an explanans or as an explanandum by a given field, which result in a fifth strong trend, namely (v) a de-anthropocentrification of our perception of the world.

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“… 3 The discussion about the notion of the individual in biology is quite extensive: See Clarke (2010); Boniolo and Testa (2012); Huneman (2014a, 2014b); Sterner (2015); Godfrey-Smith (2016); Pradeu (2012); Lidgard and Nyhart (2017); Gilbert (2017); Baedke (2019). According to Hegel, the biological individual is a unitary structure in which its component parts cannot exist outside the relationship to the whole of which they are parts and in which the parts are such that they cannot be separated from the whole without changing its structure.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hegel's Philosophy of Biology? A Programmatic Overview

Gambarotto¹,

Illetterati²

2020

Hegel Bulletin

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This paper presents what we call ‘Hegel's philosophy of biology’ to a target audience of both Hegel scholars and philosophers of biology. It also serves to introduce a special issue of the Hegel Bulletin entirely dedicated to a first mapping of this yet to be explored domain of Hegel studies. We submit that Hegel's philosophy of biology can be understood as a radicalization of the Kantian approach to organisms, and as prefiguring current philosophy of biology in important ways, especially with regard to the nature of biological organization, the role of teleology in biological explanation, and the relation between life and cognition.

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Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. I. Formal and Material Concepts of Individuality

Cited by 26 publications

References 63 publications

Microorganisms as scaffolds of host individuality: an eco-immunity account of the holobiont

Microorganisms as scaffolds of host individuality: an eco-immunity account of the holobiont

The Epistemic Revolution Induced by Microbiome Studies: An Interdisciplinary View

Hegel's Philosophy of Biology? A Programmatic Overview

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