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27Endowed Molecules and Emergent Organization: The Maupertuis-Diderot DebateEarly Science and Medicine 15 (1-2): 38-65. 2010.In his Système de la nature ou Essai sur les corps organisés, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences and a natural philosopher with a strong interest in the modes of transmission of 'genetic' information, described living minima which he termed molecules, “endowed with desire, memory and intelligence.” Now, Maupertuis was a Leibnizian of sorts; his molecules possessed higher-level, 'mental' properties, recalling La Mettrie's statement in L'Homme-Machine, t…Read more
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1338“Empiricism contra Experiment: Harvey, Locke and the Revisionist View of Experimental Philosophy”Bulletin d'histoire et d'épistémologie des sciences de la vie 16 (2): 113-140. 2009.In this paper we suggest a revisionist perspective on two significant figures in early modern life science and philosophy: William Harvey and John Locke. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, is often named as one of the rare representatives of the ‘life sciences’ who was a major figure in the Scientific Revolution. While this status itself is problematic, we would like to call attention to a different kind of problem: Harvey dislikes abstraction and controlled experiments (asi…Read more
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36The species of vitalism discussed here, to immediately rule out two possible misconceptions, is neither the feverish cosa mentale found in ruminations on ‘biopolitics’ and fascism – where it alternates quickly between being a form of evil and a form of resistance, with hardly any textual or conceptual material to discuss – nor the opaque, and less-known form in which it exists in the worlds of ‘Theory’ in the humanities, perhaps closely related to the cognate, ‘materiality’. Rather, vitalism her…Read more
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983We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘teleological’; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature exemplified by Newton and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings ultimately expressed in the concept of ‘organism’ – a purposive entity, or at least an entity possessed of functions. The beauty of this distinction is that it seems to make intuitive sense and to map onto historica…Read more
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5Pour une philosophie hybridée de la biologieMultitudes 2 (2): 11-14. 2004.introduction to special issue I edited on philo. of biology
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260Review of Fumie Kawamura, Diderot et la chimie: science, pensée et écriture. (review)H-France Reviews 16. 2016.
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10Lucretian receptions. Norbrook, Harrison, Hardie lucretius and the early modern. Pp. XVI + 313, ills. Oxford: Oxford university press, 2016. Cased, £65, us$100. Isbn: 978-0-19-871384-5 (review)The Classical Review 67 (1): 81-84. 2017.
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1064Epigenesis as Spinozism in Diderot’s biological project (draft)In Ohad Nachtomy & Justin E. H. Smith (eds.), The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy, Oup Usa. pp. 181-201. 2014.Denis Diderot’s natural philosophy is deeply and centrally ‘biologistic’: as it emerges between the 1740s and 1780s, thus right before the appearance of the term ‘biology’ as a way of designating a unified science of life (McLaughlin), his project is motivated by the desire both to understand the laws governing organic beings and to emphasize, more ‘philosophically’, the uniqueness of organic beings within the physical world as a whole. This is apparent both in the metaphysics of vital matter he…Read more
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25La catégorie d' « organisme » dans la philosophie de la biologieMultitudes 2 (2): 27-40. 2004.The category of« organism » has an ambiguous status: scientific or philosophical? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific « bolstering » for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the « mechanistic » or « reductionist » trend, which is seen as dominant since the 17th century, whether in the case of Stahlian animism, Leibnizian monadology, the neo-vitalism of Hans Driesch, or, lastly, of the « phenomenology of organic life » in the 20th century, with authors such …Read more
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757The self-fashioning of French Newtonianism Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9511-3 Authors Charles T. Wolfe, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia David Gilad, Unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
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1256Do organisms have an ontological status?History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (2-3): 195-232. 2010.The category of ‘organism’ has an ambiguous status: is it scientific or is it philosophical? Or, if one looks at it from within the relatively recent field or sub-field of philosophy of biology, is it a central, or at least legitimate category therein, or should it be dispensed with? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific “bolstering” for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the “mechanistic” or “reductionist” trend, which has been perceived as dominant since …Read more
Charles T. Wolfe
Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès
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Université de Toulouse Jean-JaurèsProfessor
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Università Di Venezia "Ca' Foscari"Post-doctoral fellow
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Philosophy of Biology |
20th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
History of Biology |
Life |
Vitalism |
17th/18th Century French Philosophy |