The idea of ‘philosophy of biology before biology’

Bognon-Küss, Cécilia; Wolfe, Charles T.

doi:10.4324/9781315623955-2

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature; and we may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy, if, by accurate enquiry and reasoning, we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near to, these general principles. The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger 21 [76]. Although biology was thus beginning to diverge from the more 'practical' field of medicine and was perhaps more philosophical due to its theoretical origination, philosophy's role in the discipline varied contextually.…”

Section: After the Galilean Revolution In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Analytic Philosophy for Biomedical Research: The Imperative of Applying Yesterday’s Timeless Messages to Today’s Impasses

Ehsani¹

2020

Future of Business and Finance

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The mantra that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it” (attributed to the computer scientist Alan Kay) exemplifies some of the expectations from the technical and innovative sides of biomedical research at present. However, for technical advancements to make real impacts both on patient health and genuine scientific understanding, quite a number of lingering challenges facing the entire spectrum from protein biology all the way to randomized controlled trials should start to be overcome. The proposal in this chapter is that philosophy is essential in this process. By reviewing select examples from the history of science and philosophy, disciplines which were indistinguishable until the mid-nineteenth century, I argue that progress toward the many impasses in biomedicine can be achieved by emphasizing theoretical work (in the true sense of the word “theory”) as a vital foundation for experimental biology. Furthermore, a philosophical biology program that could provide a framework for theoretical investigations is outlined.

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Section: After the Galilean Revolution In Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Analytic Philosophy for Biomedical Research: The Imperative of Applying Yesterday’s Timeless Messages to Today’s Impasses

Ehsani¹

2020

Future of Business and Finance

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“…Although Kant does not make this point explicit in the Critique of Judgement , recent scholarship provides substantial evidence that Kant was moving in this direction in his broader system of nature, which may be viewed as having paved the way for the study of ecology. Georg Toepfer finds evidence for this view in Kant’s notion of ‘organizing systems of organized bodies’, which Kant discusses in the Opus Postumum (Toepfer 2019: 7). At least rudimentarily, Kant appears to ‘extend his teleological reflection from the singular organism to a superindividual system and envisions an ecological system based on the reciprocal relation between living beings of different species’ (Toepfer 2019: 3).…”

Section: Degrees Of Biological Individuality – Why Some Wholes Are Mo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Georg Toepfer finds evidence for this view in Kant’s notion of ‘organizing systems of organized bodies’, which Kant discusses in the Opus Postumum (Toepfer 2019: 7). At least rudimentarily, Kant appears to ‘extend his teleological reflection from the singular organism to a superindividual system and envisions an ecological system based on the reciprocal relation between living beings of different species’ (Toepfer 2019: 3).…”

Section: Degrees Of Biological Individuality – Why Some Wholes Are Mo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While Kant reserves the notion of ‘natural end’ ( Naturzweck ) for individual organisms only (Toepfer 2019), crucial passages in the Opus Postumum reveal the extension of Kant’s thought beyond the organismic boundary. Toepfer (2019: 3) argues that by 1799 Kant was concerned to devise a proper formulation of superorganismic organizations.…”

Section: Degrees Of Biological Individuality – Why Some Wholes Are Mo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The ‘Whole’ Truth about Biological Individuality in Kant’s Account of Living Nature

Wilks

2023

Kantian rev.

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Given the central place organisms occupy in Kant’s account of living nature, it might seem unlikely that his claims about biological wholes could be relevant to current debates over the problem of biological individuality. These debates acknowledge the multiple realizability of biological individuality in vastly different forms, including parts of organisms and complex groups of organisms at various levels of the biological hierarchy, sparking much controversy in attempts to characterize a biological individual. I argue that, far from being irrelevant to this controversy, Kant’s account provides a key insight for addressing the multiple realizability problem. I show how the reciprocal causality between a self-organizing whole and its parts, which Kant thinks characterizes a natural end, is not limited to organisms but is exhibited by numerous types of beings in living nature. Self-organizing wholes of various kinds, and at various biological levels, may count as biological individuals, depending on the degree to which their functionally integrated parts are represented by reflective judgement as a natural end.

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“…As Charles Wolfe and Cécilia Bognon-Küss have recently argued, philosophers, physicians and naturalists did not wait until the theory of evolution by natural selection was available to start asking questions about the nature of the living in general: by contrast with the natural order described by the 'new physics' of the scientific revolution, the 'scandalous' character of life was a lively topic of discussion at least since the debate between Leibniz and Stahl. In this sense, our approach to Hegel's 'philosophy of biology' is justified within the framework of what has been defined as a 'philosophy of biology before biology' (Wolfe 2019;Bognon-Küss and Wolfe 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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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The idea of ‘philosophy of biology before biology’

Cited by 9 publications

References 1 publication

Analytic Philosophy for Biomedical Research: The Imperative of Applying Yesterday’s Timeless Messages to Today’s Impasses

Analytic Philosophy for Biomedical Research: The Imperative of Applying Yesterday’s Timeless Messages to Today’s Impasses

The ‘Whole’ Truth about Biological Individuality in Kant’s Account of Living Nature

Hegel's Philosophy of Biology? A Programmatic Overview

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