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59The Study of Socioethical Issues in Systems BiologyAmerican Journal of Bioethics 7 (4): 67-78. 2007.Systems biology is the rapidly growing and heavily funded successor science to genomics. Its mission is to integrate extensive bodies of molecular data into a detailed mathematical understanding of all life processes, with an ultimate view to their prediction and control. Despite its high profile and widespread practice, there has so far been almost no bioethical attention paid to systems biology and its potential social consequences. We outline some of systems biology's most important socioethi…Read more
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58Comments on Philosophy of Science after Feminism, by Janet KouranyPerspectives on Science 20 (3): 310-319. 2012.
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57Contemporary feminist perspectives on biological scienceBiology and Philosophy 4 (1): 107-119. 1989.
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53Review of Kitcher: "The advancement of science: Science without legend, objectivity without illusions" (review)Philosophical Review 104 (1): 147-151. 1995.Philip Kitcher's book begins with a familiar historical overview. In the 1940s and 50s a confident, optimistic vision of science was widely shared by philosophers and historians of science. The goal of science was to discover the truth about nature, and over the centuries science had advanced steadily towards that goal; science discerned the real kinds of things of which the world was composed and the causal relations between them; the methods of science were rational and its deliverances object…Read more
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52Review of Joseph LaPorte, Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (6). 2004.
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51The Mental Lives of Nonhuman Animals John DupreIn Colin Allen & D. Jamison (eds.), Readings in Animal Cognition, Mit Press. pp. 323. 1996.
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50I—John Dupré: Living CausesAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 19-37. 2013.This paper considers the applicability of standard accounts of causation to living systems. In particular it examines critically the increasing tendency to equate causal explanation with the identification of a mechanism. A range of differences between living systems and paradigm mechanisms are identified and discussed. While in principle it might be possible to accommodate an account of mechanism to these features, the attempt to do so risks reducing the idea of a mechanism to vacuity. It is pr…Read more
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50Towards a philosophy of microbiologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (4): 775-779. 2007.
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48Disciplinary baptisms: A comparison of the naming stories of genetics, molecular biology, genomics and systems biologyHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 29 (1): 5-32. 2007.Understanding how scientific activities use naming stories to achieve disciplinary status is important not only for insight into the past, but for evaluating current claims that new disciplines are emerging. In order to gain a historical understanding of how new disciplines develop in relation to these baptismal narratives, we compare two recently formed disciplines, systems biology and genomics, with two earlier related life sciences, genetics and molecular biology. These four disciplines span …Read more
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43I—John Dupré: Living CausesAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 19-37. 2013.This paper considers the applicability of standard accounts of causation to living systems. In particular it examines critically the increasing tendency to equate causal explanation with the identification of a mechanism. A range of differences between living systems and paradigm mechanisms are identified and discussed. While in principle it might be possible to accommodate an account of mechanism to these features, the attempt to do so risks reducing the idea of a mechanism to vacuity. It is pr…Read more
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42Against maladaptationism: Or what's wrong with evolutionary psychologyIn Massimo Mazzotti (ed.), Knowledge as Social Order: Rethinking the Sociology of Barry Barnes, Ashgate Pub Co. pp. 165--180. 2008.
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42Some philosophical implications of the rehabilitation of group selectionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4): 619-620. 1994.
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42Emerging sciences and new conceptions of disease; or, beyond the monogenomic differentiated cell lineageEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 119-131. 2011.This paper will begin with some very broad and general considerations about the kind of biological entities we are. This exercise is motivated by the belief that the view of what we—multicellular eukaryotic organisms—are that is widely assumed by biologists, medical scientists and the general public, is an extremely limited one. It cannot be assumed a priori that a more sophisticated view will make a major difference to the science or practice of medicine, and there are areas of medicine to whic…Read more
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40Process epistemology in the COVID-19 era: rethinking the research process to avoid dangerous forms of reificationEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 1-22. 2022.Whether we live in a world of autonomous things, or a world of interconnected processes in constant flux, is an ancient philosophical debate. Modern biology provides decisive reasons for embracing the latter view. How does one understand the practices and outputs of science in such a dynamic, ever-changing world - and particularly in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific knowledge has been regarded as bedrock for decisive social interventions? We argue that key t…Read more
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40Introduction: Towards a philosophy of microbiologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 2007.
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39Review of Sober's "philosophy of biology" (review)British Journal for Philosophy of Science 63 143-145. 1996.Elliott Sober is among the leading contemporary contributors to the philosophy of biology. He also has an exceptional ability to explain difficult ideas clearly. He is therefore very well equipped to provide an accessible yet state-of-the-art introduction to the philosophy of biology, and in most respects this optimistic prognosis is justified by the present volume. Focussing on evolutionary biology, Sober provides a general overview of evolutionary theory; a chapter on creationism that serves a…Read more
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38Science in a Democratic Society. By Philip Kitcher. (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011. Pp. 270. Price £24.95.)Philosophical Quarterly 63 (251): 408-410. 2013.
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38The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality : Conference on Evolution and Information : Papers (edited book)MIT Press. 1987.Controversies about optimality models and adaptationist methodologies have animated the discussions of evolutionary theory in recent years. The sociobiologists, following the lead of E. O. Wilson, have argued that if Darwinian natural selection can be reliably expected to produce the best possible type of organism - one that optimizes the value of its genetic contribution to future generations - then evolution becomes a powerfully predictive theory as well as an explanatory one. The enthusiastic…Read more
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38Inductive Inference and its Naturalistic Ground (review)Teaching Philosophy 17 (4): 370-372. 1994.
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34The Methodology of Economics: Or How Economists Explain. 2nd ed. Blaug Mark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 286 + xxviii pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 10 (1): 138. 1994.
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34The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without IllusionsPhilosophical Review 104 (1): 147. 1995.
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31Review of Robert N. Brandon: Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (2): 292-296. 1997.This book is a collection of essays by a leading philosopher of biology and spans his career over almost the last twenty years. Most of the topics that have been of concern to philosophers of biology in this period are touched on to some extent, and the collection of these essays in a convenient volume will certainly be welcomed by everyone working in this field. The essays are arranged chronologically, and divided into three sections. Although the chapters in the first section have substantial …Read more
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30Causally powerful processesSynthese 199 (3-4): 10667-10683. 2021.Processes produce changes: rivers erode their banks and thunderstorms cause floods. If I am right that organisms are a kind of process, then the causally efficacious behaviours of organisms are also examples of processes producing change. In this paper I shall try to articulate a view of how we should think of causation within a broadly processual ontology of the living world. Specifically, I shall argue that causation, at least in a central class of cases, is the interaction of processes, that …Read more
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30Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social SciencePhilosophical Review 119 (1): 123-126. 2010.
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University of ExeterDepartment of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology
Egenis, Centre for the Study of Life SciencesProfessor
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Biology |
Metaphysics |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Metaphysics |