Book ID: CBB108117531

Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives (2017)

unapi

Lidgard, Scott (Editor)
Nyhart, Lynn K. (Editor)


University of Chicago Press


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 400 pp.
Language: English

Individuals are things that everybody knows—or thinks they do. Yet even scholars who practice or analyze the biological sciences often cannot agree on what an individual is and why. One reason for this disagreement is that the many important biological individuality concepts serve very different purposes—defining, classifying, or explaining living structure, function, interaction, persistence, or evolution. Indeed, as the contributors to Biological Individuality reveal, nature is too messy for simple definitions of this concept, organisms too quirky in the diverse ways they reproduce, function, and interact, and human ideas about individuality too fraught with philosophical and historical meaning. Bringing together biologists, historians, and philosophers, this book provides a multifaceted exploration of biological individuality that identifies leading and less familiar perceptions of individuality both past and present, what they are good for, and in what contexts. Biological practice and theory recognize individuals at myriad levels of organization, from genes to organisms to symbiotic systems. We depend on these notions of individuality to address theoretical questions about multilevel natural selection and Darwinian fitness; to illuminate empirical questions about development, function, and ecology; to ground philosophical questions about the nature of organisms and causation; and to probe historical and cultural circumstances that resonate with parallel questions about the nature of society. Charting an interdisciplinary research agenda that broadens the frameworks in which biological individuality is discussed, this book makes clear that in the realm of the individual, there is not and should not be a direct path from biological paradigms based on model organisms through to philosophical generalization and historical reification.

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Reviewed By

Review James Strick (2019) Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 741-742). unapi

Review James DiFrisco (2019) Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 40-44). unapi

Review Javier Suárez (2018) Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives". History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences (p. 67). unapi

Review Marie I. Kaiser (2019) Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 146-147). unapi

Review Marie I. Kaiser (2019) Review of "Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 146-147). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB108117531/

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Authors & Contributors
Casetta, Elena
Isabel Gabel
Escribano-Cabeza, Miguel
Suárez, Javier
Guttinger, Stephan
Molter, Daniel J.
Concepts
Philosophy of biology
Biology
Evolution
Philosophy of science
Individuality
Species concept (biology)
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
Germany
France
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