History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences最新文献

From 1960 to 1966, the Bay of Porto Paone, a volcanic crater located on the islet of Nisida, was home to the first "tiny underwater nature reserve" of the Gulf of Naples. The concession of the stretch of water was requested by the Stazione Zoologica di Napoli (in 1982 renamed Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn), a marine biological institution traditionally devoted to laboratory studies of fundamental biological phenomena, which at the time aimed at strengthening its international visibility as a place for field ecological research. The first part of the paper contextualizes this local event in the broader international trend towards the development of ecological sciences and the rising call for field sites as essential infrastructures for ecological research. The second part reconstructs the legal, administrative and scientific practices that made it possible the establishment of an "underwater reserve" in the Bay of Porto Paone and describes the main research projects carried out there. The last part of the paper goes one step beyond historiography and addresses issues related to the importance of historical narratives on past place-based research projects for contemporary studies in historical ecology.

The problem of providing an objective characterization of human variation have been often intermingled with the questionable task of providing scientific grounds for racism. The source of this confusion lies in the misconception that Petrus Camper's (1722-1789) theory of the facial line demonstrates the superiority of the Caucasian racial type. In this paper, we argue that the invention of the facial line, far from obeying Euro-centric aesthetic bias, grounded Camper's neutrality with respect to any claim of racial superiority. This can be understood by analyzing the representational function of the facial line in the light of the aesthetic underpinnings of Camper's overall theory. Thus, we show that the theory of the facial line rests upon the fundamental assumption that if a representation faithfully captures certain aesthetic properties of its target, then it also represents objective physical properties thereof. To unpack how this principle underlies the construction of the theory of the facial line, we analyze the influence of Johan Joachim Winckelmann's (1717-1768) conception of Ideal Beauty on Camper's craniological studies. The features of correctness, neutrality, and duality which Winckelmann ascribes to the Ideal Beauty informed the discovery of the facial line as the appropriate key for the anthropometric characterization of human variation. From this it is argued that a consistent interpretation of Camper's work must consider his representation of human variation as a preorder, not a hierarchy, in the logical space of the facial angle.

"Organicism" often refers to the idea that ecosystems or communities are, or are like, organisms. Often implicit in early twentieth century, it has been theorized by Clements, relying on physiological and developmental concepts. I investigate the fate of this idea in major attempts of a theoretical synthesis of ecology in the first part of the twentieth century. I first consider Bioecology (1939), by Clements and Shelford, which elaborates clementsian organicism as a general framework for plant and animal ecology. Then I investigate the major animal ecology treatise of the Chicago school ecologists C. Allee, T. Park, O. Park, K. Schmidt and A. Emerson, Principles of animal ecology (1949). I show how they shifted organicism from physiology to evolution, synthesizing inspiration from both Clements and Sewall Wright, got their inspiration in evolutionary biology, and built a systematic correspondence between cells, organisms and communities. I claim that the focus on populations allowed them to apply Darwinian insights at the level of communities. Finally I argue that this theoretical synthesis fell apart in the next decade because of the rise of density-dependent accounts of population regulation.

We examine the philosophy of race from the perspective of the identified problems with such a philosophy - domain problems, deference problems and mismatch problems. Any philosophy of race should consider at least two domains of human endeavor - the social and the natural. In most cases the social domain defers to the natural domain for a biological explanation for race. Some researchers suggest that there is an impasse in the natural domain that keeps the door open for a biological explanation of race. We examine this purported impasse and conclude that there is a complete lack of scientific support for the existence of human races, and that hence the impasse is a mirage. The inference of no biological races is not, however, a non-result. The consequent lack of support for biological races can be acknowledged by social scientists in formulating their social domain-oriented ontology of race.

The research programme 'basal cognition' adopts an evolutionary perspective for studying biological cognition. This entails investigating possible cognitive processes in 'simple'-often non-neuronal-organisms as a means to discover conserved mechanisms and adaptive capacities underwriting cognition in more complex (neuronal) organisms. However, by pulling in the opposite direction of a tradition that views cognition as something that is unique to neuronal organisms, basal cognition has been met with a fair amount of scepticism by philosophers and scientists. The very idea of approaching cognition by way of investigating the behaviour and underlying mechanisms in, say, bacteria, has been seen as preposterous and harmful to both cognitive science and biology. This paper aims to temper such scepticism to a certain degree by drawing parallels with how the evolution of 'development,' another loaded concept that refers to a not-so-easily definable, contested bundle of phenomena, has been fruitfully approached in Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Evo-Devo). Through this comparison, we identify four promising features of the basal cognition approach. These features suggest that sweeping scepticism may be unwarranted. However, each of them comes with important epistemic cautionary notes that should not be disregarded. By presenting these twofold considerations as potential ways to integrate a fully evolutionary perspective into basal cognition, this paper seeks to provide clarity and direction for the advancement of this research programme.

This article proposes an empirical approach to understanding the life of an organism that overcomes reductionist and dualist conceptions. The approach is based on Immanuel Kant's analysis of the cognitive conditions required for the recognition of an organism: the concept of teleology and the assumption of a formative power of self-generation. It is analyzed how these two criteria are applied in the cognition of a developing organism. Using the example of a developmental series of a plant leaf, an active and relational process between observer and developing organism is shown, within which the teleology and self-generating power of the organism can be empirically observed through the mental faculties of understanding and will. Furthermore, it is emphasized that, according to Kant, even physical objects are not readily given, but are actively constituted through the unification of sense perceptions with concepts. This Kantian mode of objectification facilitates cognition of the physical properties of an organism. It can be supplemented with a participatory and co-constitutive mode of realization, in which the teleologically organizing and self-generating power of the organism can become an object of empirical research. It is argued that the participatory mode also facilitates an expanded conception of nature that allows for the existence of living beings within it. Finally, an analogy to Goethe's approach to the living organism is highlighted. In summary, it is stated that it is possible to understand life by consciously participating in it.

While Julian S. Huxley's role in the Eugenics Society is well known, the ways in which his scientific research program intimately intertwined with his broader social views is sometimes overlooked. This paper analyzes Huxley's earlier and later research centering Individual (1912) and Modern Synthesis (1942) as two case studies in the context of his larger body of work. There currently exists much exceptional literature on Huxley, which is incorporated and reviewed as much as possible. That literature explores the connection between Huxley's biological views and social views, but there is more to say about the nature of that connection warranting a return to the details of his research program. Huxley aimed to establish the biologist's role for engineering human evolution towards sets of ideals conceived by the educated elite.