Philippe Huneman

Since its origin in the early 20th century, the modern synthesis theory of evolution has grown to represent the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. It is a powerful and successful theory. Its defining features include the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of development and inheritance, and the role of natural selection as the cause of adaptation. Since the advent of the 21st century, however, the modern synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development of organisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. Many current commentators charge that the new biology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the modern synthesis theory of evolution. Defenders of the modern synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology, without forfeiting its central precepts. The original essays collected in this volume—by evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology—survey and assess the various challenges to the modern synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the modern synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the modern synthesis.

Philosophers of science have recently focused on the scientific activity of modeling phenomena, and explicated several of its properties, as well as the activities embedded into it. A first approach to modeling has been elaborated in terms of representing a target system: yet other epistemic functions, such as producing data or detecting phenomena, are at least as relevant. Additional useful distinctions have emerged, such as the one between phenomenological and mechanistic models. In biological sciences, besides mathematical models, models now come in three forms: in vivo, in vitro and in silico. Each has been investigated separately, and many specific problems they raised have been laid out. Another relevant distinction is disciplinary: do models differ in significant ways according to the discipline involved—medicine or biology, evolutionary biology or earth science? Focusing on either this threefold distinction or the disciplinary boundaries reveals that they might not be sufficient from a philosophical perspective. On the contrary, focusing on the interaction between these various kinds of models, some interesting forms of explanation come to the fore, as is exemplified by the papers included in this issue. On the other hand, a focus on the use of models, rather than on their content, shows that the distinction between biological and medical models is theoretically sound.

Philosophers of science have recently focused on the scientific activity of modeling phenomena, and explicated several of its properties, as well as the activities embedded into it. A first approach to modeling has been elaborated in terms of representing a target system: yet other epistemic functions, such as producing data or detecting phenomena, are at least as relevant. Additional useful distinctions have emerged, such as the one between phenomenological and mechanistic models. In biological sciences, besides mathematical models, models now come in three forms: in vivo, in vitro and in silico. Each has been investigated separately, and many specific problems they raised have been laid out. Another relevant distinction is disciplinary: do models differ in significant ways according to the discipline involved—medicine or biology, evolutionary biology or earth science? Focusing on either this threefold distinction or the disciplinary boundaries reveals that they might not be sufficient from a philosophical perspective. On the contrary, focusing on the interaction between these various kinds of models, some interesting forms of explanation come to the fore, as is exemplified by the papers included in this issue. On the other hand, a focus on the use of models, rather than on their content, shows that the distinction between biological and medical models is theoretically sound.

Dans l'histoire de la philosophie, la question du temps a été abordée selon deux tendances opposées : le temps de la nature avec Aristote et le temps de la conscience avec Augustin. Ces deux formes irréductibles l'une à l'autre ont vu leur relation se complexifier, notamment avec la théorie de la relativité au début du XXe siècle, puis la mécanique quantique, qui ont bousculé notre perception et compréhension du temps. Cet ouvrage, écrit par des scientifiques et des philosophes, se concentre plus particulièrement sur le concept de " temps naturel ", examiné à la lumière de ses utilisations en sciences, qui semblent remettre en cause son unité. Physique, biologie, sciences cognitives, paléontologie, philosophie sont ici convoquées, chacune de ces disciplines disposant d'instruments spécifiques de mesure et de définition d'échelles de temps. Que nous apprennent-elles sur la " nature du temps ", sur ses propriétés comme la continuité ou l'irréversibilité? Quel statut doit-on donner aux différences entre les échelles utilisées pour observer les phénomènes? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées dans ce livre, nouvelle incursion dans les mystères du temps.

I am first going to develop a sort of cartography of the different meanings and usages of “biodiversity”, which will emphasize a few leitmotives. Next, to introduce some of these leitmotives, I will highlight two or three important elements in the process through which the term came to form a decisive role both for scientists from different fields linked to ecology, and the politicians or lawyers involved with the policies that govern the consequences of human actions on nature. In the conclusion, I suggest that, in the same way as cognition is now seen as “situated cognition” because the agent is not detached from the world where its cognition takes place and has effect, biodiversity is something like a “situated concept”, a concept that does not get its legitimacy from models, theoretical elaborations and empirical data, but from the realization that something is altered in the biological world as such.

A philosopher explores the many dimensions of a beguilingly simple question. Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? Through an analysis of these questions and others, philosopher Philippe Huneman describes the different meanings of "why," and how those meanings can, and should (or should not), be conflated. As Huneman outlines, there are three basic meanings of why: the cause of an event, the reason of a belief, and the reason why I do what I do (the purpose). Each of these meanings, in turn, impacts how we approach knowledge in a wide array of disciplines: science, history, psychology, and metaphysics. Exhibiting a rare combination of conversational ease and intellectual rigor, Huneman teases out the hidden dimensions of questions as seemingly simple as "Why did Mickey Mouse open the refrigerator?" or as seemingly unanswerable as "Why am I me?" In doing so, he provides an extraordinary tour of canonical and contemporary philosophical thought, from Plato and Aristotle, through Descartes and Spinoza, to Elizabeth Anscombe and Ruth Millikan, and beyond. Of course, no proper reckoning with the question "why?" can afford not to acknowledge its limits, which are the limits, and the ends, of reason itself. Huneman thus concludes with a provocative elaboration of what Kant called the "natural need for metaphysics," the unallayed instinct we have to ask the question even when we know there can be no unequivocal answer.

La question qu’on nomme aujourd’hui des « genres naturels » en métaphysique porte sur les « jointures » du monde : quelles classes de choses constituent le monde et existent réellement? Si nominalistes et réalistes s’opposent depuis longtemps sur la possibilité même de répondre à cette question, les sciences modernes proposent des découpages en genres naturels qui contrastent souvent avec l’image naturelle du monde. Cet article se concentre sur les genres naturels en biologie. Après avoir présenté le principe de réponse offert par la biologie évolutive, à savoir la systématique cladistique, j’expose le paradoxe du poisson, puisque « poisson » n’y est pas un nom de classe objectif, et semble donc aussi peu réel que « légume ». Je montre ensuite comment ce paradoxe est abordé différemment par des conceptions réalistes ou pragmatistes des genres naturels, et, en distinguant plusieurs sortes de pragmatismes en fonction des pratiques sociales auxquelles ils réfèrent la vérité des énoncés, je défendrai un pragmatisme modéré quant aux genres naturels en biologie.

The concept of “organism” has been central to modern biology, with its definition and philosophical implications evolving since the nineteenth century. In contemporary biology, the divide between developmental and physiological approaches and evolutionary approaches has influenced the definition of organism. The convergence between molecular biology and evolutionary biology has led to the term “suborganismal biology,” while the return to the organism has been characterized by animal behavior studies and Evo-devo. The philosophical approach to the concept of individual is divided between a Kantian understanding of organism, which defines necessary and sufficient conditions for any X to be a “natural purpose,” and an evolutionary approach, which considers what a biological individual is and confers natural selection a key role in this definition. While the former aims to find necessary and sufficient conditions for an organism, the latter thinks in terms of conceptual spaces, being much more liberal in pointing out organisms in the world. The paper examines possible connections between these two approaches and assesses the prospects of a reconciliation between them.

For us, the word "technique" connotes the world of technological artefacts, each of them having their own function. Nevertheless, this word comes from the old Greek word technè, which meant both arts and technology, and could in the medieval times be accurately translated in latin by "ars". Indeed, "ars" shared the same ambiguity as technè, as does the German Kunst, since künstlich is used as much for "artistic" as for "artificial". But when the "liberal arts" began to include painting, sculpture, and so on, previously belonging to "mechanical arts", those two words split and began to name two different things. In the end, "art" meant only the "artistic" side, and "techniques", the side of technological or technical artefacts. The division between "artefacts" and "objectsof arts" became something taken for granted in European thinking. Of course, this shift had both "internal" reasons, within the artists' practices (concerning the difference between working according to a tradition in order to deliver a piece of art, and working spontaneously in a non-useful fashion, and so on) and some "external" reasons (some craftsmen vindicating privileges due to the special situation of their practice among the group of so-called artists; see Heinich 1999). However, in the present perspective the common root of technology and art in this old experience named technè could prove to be illuminating concerning the status of artefacts.

Throughout my university career, and since I began my Ph.D., Jean Gayon was there. Unlike many contributors to this volume, to the early or mid-career researchers who do French philosophy of biology today, I did not know Jean as a dissertation supervisor or a professor, but as a dissertation examiner, as expert witness to the beginning of my career and as indisputable scientific authority. For fifteen years I have been doing philosophy of evolutionary biology with Jean Gayon. In this chapter, I do not offer an analysis of “evolutionary biology according to Gayon” but I aim to pay tribute to a philosopher who was at once a “major contemporary”, a colleague, a friend, and an inspiration.

Robustness is a pervasive property of living systems, instantiated at all levels of the biological hierarchies. As several other usual concepts in evolutionary biology, such as plasticity or dominance, it has been questioned from the viewpoint of its consequences upon evolution as well as from the side of its causes, on an ultimate or proximate viewpoint. It is therefore equally the explanandum for some enquiries in evolution in ecology, and the explanans for some interesting evolutionary phenomena such as evolvability. This epistemological fact instantiates general property of biological evolution that I call “explanatory reversibility”. In this chapter, I attempt to systematize the explanatory projects regarding robustness by distinguishing a set of epistemological questions. Are they the various expressions of one general project with specific key concepts and methods, or very disparate epistemic projects, unified by the mere homonymy of the term “robustness”? More precisely, are there specific kinds of explanations suited to explain robustness? Finally, how does robustness as an explanandum connect with other explananda in which evolutionists have been massively interested recently such as complexity, modularity or evolvability? After having initially explored various meanings of the concept of robustness and surveyed its instances in biology, I will propose a distinction between mechanical and structural explanations of robustness in evolutionary and functional biology. Then, among the latter, I will highlight the class of “topological explanations,” and the subclass of explanations based on networks, as a major explanatory tool to address robustness. Focusing on evolutionary issues, I will eventually address the “explanatory reversibility” of robustness and consider its relation to key evolutionary concepts that are also explanatorily revertible such as modularity, evolvability and complexity.