Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into Biology
484
Beyond Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into Biology
484Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780739174371 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Lexington Books |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 484 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Adam C. Scarfe is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Winnipeg. His areas of research are applied ethics, philosophy of education, continental philosophy, and philosophy of biology. Scarfe is the executive director of the International Process Network, an organization dedicated to advancing process philosophy globally. He has published well over twenty-five articles and book chapters, and is the editor and a co-author of The Adventure of Education: Process Philosophers on Learning, Teaching, and Research (Rodopi Press, 2009).
Table of Contents
Foreword: Evolution Beyond Newton, Darwin, and Entailing LawIntroduction: On a “Life-Blind Spot” in Neo-Darwainism’s Mechanistic Metaphysical Lens
Section 1: Complexity, Systems Theory, and Emergence
Chapter 1: Complex Systems Dynamics in Evolution and Emergence Processes
Chapter 2: Why Emergence Matters
Chapter 3: On the Incompatibility of the Neo-Darwinian Hypothesis With Systems-Theoretical Explanations of Biological Development
Chapter 4: Process-First Ontology
Chapter 5: Ordinal Pluralism as Metaphysics for Biology
Section 2: Biosemiotics
Chapter 6: Why Do We Need a Semiotic Understanding of Life?
Chapter 7: The Irreducibility of Life to Mentality: Biosemiotics or Emergence?
Section 3: Homeostasis, Thermodynamics, and Symbiogenesis
Chapter 8: Biology’s Second Law: Homeostasis, Purpose and Desire
Chapter 9: “Wind at Life’s Back” —Toward a Naturalistic, Whiteheadian Teleology: Symbiogenesis and the Second Law
Chapter 10: Of Termites and Men: On the Ontology of Collective Individuals
Section 4: The Baldwin Effect, Behavior, and Evolution
Chapter 11: The Baldwin Effect in an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
Chapter 12: On the Ramifications of the Theory of Organic Selection for Environmental and Evolutionary Ethics
Section 5: Autogen, Teleology, and Teleodynamics
Chapter 13: Teleology Versus Mechanism in Biology: Beyond Self-Organization
Chapter 14: Teleodynamics: A Neo-Naturalistic Conception of Organismic Teleology
Section 6: Epigenetics
Chapter 15: Epigenetics: Toward An Inclusive Concept of Evolution
Chapter 16: Epigenetics, Soft Inheritance, Mechanistic Metaphysics, and Bioethics
Section 7: Organism and Mechanism
Chapter 17: From Organicism to Mechanism—and Half-Way Back?
Chapter 18: Machines and Organisms: The Rise and Fall of a Conflict
About the Contributors
What People are Saying About This
This collection of papers explores some ways forward for biological science, out of its neo-Darwinian stasis and its mechanistic bonds. Perspectives brought to bear on this project herein range from ontogeny to ecology, entrained by a renewed bio-philosophy, and influenced as well by semiotics and moral considerability. The contributors include biologists and philosophers as well as a theologian. Major influences from the past are Aristotle, Kant, Lloyd Morgan and Whitehead, among more recent ones like Justus Buchler and Waddington. Anti-mechanicism is the overall organizing theme, as suggested by the phenomena of emergence and complexity, and mediated by concepts like self-organization and finality. Bacon’s prohibition against final cause serving as a motivation within scientific models is finally being jettisoned. Special topics include: adaptive state space, agency, anticipation, autonomy, epigenetics, hierarchical structures, interpretation, niche construction, organic selection, performativity, process philosophy, and symbiogenesis. Structural attractors are hinted at in regard to extension outward of relevant environments. There is a bit of internal criticism, as well as a muted demurrer by an observer from the current establishment. I recommend this volume to those willing to consider some of the possibilities emerging now within biological science.