Spinoza and Contemporary Biology: Lectures on the Philosophy of Biology and Cognitivism

by Henri Atlan, Robert Boncardo (Editor), Inja Stracenski (Translator), Pierre Macherey (Preface by)

Overview

Published in France in 2018, Henri Atlan’s book Cours de philosophie biologique et cognitiviste: Spinoza et la biologie actuelle (Odile Jacob, 2018) represents a turning point in Spinoza’s interpretations of contemporary life sciences. Henri Atlan is the first in this field of research, of applied epistemology and ontology, to effectively address contemporary questions in biology and cognitive sciences. Atlan presents us with a genuine understanding of Spinoza’s monism, which is neither materialistic nor idealistic, and with an expertise in contemporary life sciences that will open an entire new field of research in Spinoza scholarship as well as in philosophy of sciences. Readers will better understand the connection between Spinoza’s Ethics, his ontology and epistemology, and modern life sciences, allowing us to rethink the relationship between ethics and modern sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474489010
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/31/2026
Series:	Spinoza Studies
Pages:	568
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Henri Atlan is Professor Emeritus of Biophysics at the Universityies of Paris VI and Jerusalem and Honorary Director of Research in Philosophy of Biology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Robert Boncardo is Sessional Tutor in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. He completed his doctorate in French Studies at the University of Sydney and Aix-Marseille Universityé.

Inja Stracenski is Co-ordinator and Lecturer in the School of Jewish Theology at The University of Potsdam

Table of Contents

Preface by Pierre Macherey

Foreword

Introduction: Why Spinoza?

Part I: The Intelligible and the Sensible: The Relevance of Spinoza's Doctrine

Chapter 1. The Order of Philosophizing: Nature

Chapter 2. From a Biophysics of the Individual to the Nature of the Human Mind

Chapter 3. Matter and Thought: Identity and Differences

Chapter 4. The Unfinished

Part II: Psychophysical Causations

Chapter 5. Ideas and Things

Chapter 6. The Body Cannot Determine the Mind to Think (Ethics III, 2, First Move)

Chapter 7. Detour Through Cognitive Neurosciences

Chapter 8. Causes, Correlations, Information, Neuronal Codes

Chapter 9. Unconscious Consciousness. From the Inadequate to the Adequate

Chapter 10. Methods of Research and Metaphysical Temptations

Chapter 11. The "Whole of Nature" Under Each Attribute

Chapter 12. Emergence and Supervenience: Anomalous Monism and Synthetic Identity

Conclusion

Appendix: The conatus

Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

Beyond a fecund commentary about Spinoza that will inflect future interpretations, more broadly, Atlan has long been a critic of the obfuscations arising from a dualist metaphysics setting mind and brain in opposition and this latest work brilliantly settles the score.

Alfred I. Tauber

Based on a groundbreaking seminar on 'Complexity and Self-Organization: Spinoza, a Philosophy for Today,' offered in 2007 at Johns Hopkins' Humanities Center where so-called French Theory was launched in the United States at a conference on the 'sciences of man,' in 1966, Henri Atlan's new book is the brilliant and long-awaited sequel to his earlier magnum opus, the two-volume Sparks of Randomness, centered likewise around the 17th century sage from Amsterdam. While that work read Spinoza in light of Kabbalah, modern epistemology, and computational models of scientific reasoning, whose insights were beautifully laid out as if on a Talmudic page, Spinoza and Contemporary Biology greatly extends Atlan's philosophical project into the most advanced reaches of the science of life as well as the cognitive neurosciences with the deep probing and discursive rigour that marks his unique oeuvre overall. This massive tome provides an actual course and pedagogical tour de force in assessing the age-old philosophical problems regarding the elusive nexus between the living and the inanimate, mind and body, truth and error, in a radically novel perspective. In addition, Atlan's latest study helps us make sense of Spinoza's own most fundamental thoughts, the so-called 'small physics' and larger metaphysics, with its guiding concept of cause and three kinds of knowledge to begin with.

Hent de Vries