Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

by Daniel J. Nicholson (Editor), John Dupre (Editor)

Overview

Everything Flows explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been supposed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead's panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the prospects of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198779636
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/31/2018
Pages:	404
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Daniel J. Nicholson is a research fellow currently based at Egenis, The Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter. Previously, he held appointments at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas in Tel Aviv, as well as at the Konrard Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research near Vienna. His work is characterized by an integrated and strongly interdisciplinary approach to the history and philosophy of biology, with a specific interest in the ontology of living systems and the adequacy of mechanistic explanations to make sense of them. He is also interested in general topics in the philosophy of science and in theoretical biology, broadly construed.

John Dupre is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Egenis, The Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter. He has formerly held posts at Oxford, Birkbeck College, London, and Stanford, and visiting chairs at the University of Amsterdam and Cambridge. He has wide-ranging interests in the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of science generally, and naturalistic, empirically grounded metaphysics. He is a former president of the British Society for Philosophy of Science, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Table of Contents

Foreword, Johannes JaegerPart I: Introduction1. A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology, John Dupre & Daniel J. NicholsonPart II: Metaphysics2. Processes and Precipitates, Peter Simons3. Dispositionalism: A Dynamic Theory of Causation, Rani Lill Anjum & Stephen Mumford4. Biological Processes: Criteria of Identity and Persistence, James DiFrisco5. Genidentity and Biological Processes, Thomas Pradeu6. Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology: Some Basic Notions of General Process Theory, Johanna SeibtPart III: Organisms7. Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream, Daniel J. Nicholson8. Objectcy and Agency: Towards a Methodological Vitalism, Denis Walsh9. Symbiosis, Transient Biological Individuality, and Evolutionary Processes, Frederic Bouchard10. From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological Individuals, Argyris ArnellosPart IV: Development and Education11. Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory, Paul Griffiths & Karola Stotz12. Waddington's Processual Epigenetics and the Debate over Cryptic Variability, Flavia Fabris13. Capturing Processes: The Interplay of Modelling Strategies and Conceptual Understanding in Developmental Biology, Laura Nuno de la Rosa14. Intersecting Processes are Necessary Explanantia for Evolutionary Biology, but Challenge Retrodiction, Eric Bapteste & Gemma AndersonPart IV: Implications and Applications15. A Process Ontology for Macromolecular Biology, Stephan Guttinger16. A Processual Perspective on Cancer, Marta Bertolaso & John Dupre17. Measuring the World: Olfaction as a Process Model of Perception, Ann-Sophie Barwich18. Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma, Anne Sophie Meincke

Editorial Reviews

"Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology is an excellent example of the skillful sampling of an on-going approach in philosophy of science. The sampling quite obviously emerged from intensive live discussions among the authors and stands in sharp contrast to the haphazardly put together collections that seem to dominate the field these days. It is an insightful and surprisingly lively read. I especially warmly recommend it to those philosophers exposed chiefly to the standard topics and approaches in philosophy of biology and in philosophy of science more generally." — Slobodan Perović , Metascience

"I highly recommend this insightful and lively collection." — Slobodan Perović, University of Belgrade, Metascience

"This anthology heralds a revolution in the philosophy of biology, arguing that the long-standing dominance of the mechanistic framework should finally come to an end. Ambitious and innovative, yet cogent and empirically grounded, Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré's Everything Flows is a must read for anyone interested in understanding new directions in the investigation of the biological world." — Katherine Valde, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, Philosophy of Science

"Everything Flows is an impressive collection and a worthwhile read for metaphysicians, philosophers of science, and biologists... Whether or not support for processualism will grow or dwindle remains to be seen; irrespective, the book stands as an absorbing study of a specific moment in analytic philosophy of biology, and a manifesto for a distinctive movement in that field" — Adam Ferner, Royal Institute of Philosophy, BJPS Review of Books

"Nicholson and Dupré's Everything Flows is an excellent, multiperspectival effort to raise awareness about the metaphysical assumptions and problems that underlie the dominant orientation in mainstream biology, namely, that of mechanistic neo-Darwinism with its substance outlook, and to display why the process-relational alternative is to be embraced instead." — Adam C. Scarfe, Department of Philosophy, University of Winnipeg, Canada, Process Studies

"This is an important book in the development of biological explanation and understanding ... Essential." — L. C. Archie, CHOICE

"This book appears at a time when genocentric mechanism has been widely disseminated to the public even as cutting-edge biologists and philosophers have been pulling the rug out from under it ... One of the uses of this book for philosophers will be to counter the metaphysical enshrinement of a false, but widespread impression about genes ... It is true that Everything Flows assumes philosophical and biological literacy, but it is also true that it does a very good job teaching both." — David Depew, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences

From the Publisher