•  4
    Human Enhancement
    with Simone Bateman, Sylvie Allouche, Jérôme Goffette, and Michela Marzano
    Enhancing the human brain's cognitive capacities is another crucial goal of transhumanism. In a new essay Andy Clark, author of Natural‐Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence, considers how the merging of humans and machines will enable us to redesign ourselves for the better.
  •  53
    Literally speaking, "Philosophy of biology" is a rather old expression. William Whewell coined it in 1840, at the very time he introduced the expression "philosophy of science". Whewell was fond of creating neologisms, like Auguste Comte, his French counterpart in the field of the philosophical reflection about science. Historians of science know that a few years earlier, in 1834, Whewell had generated a small scandal when he proposed the word "scientist" as a general term by which "the students…Read more
  •  19
    Les fonctions: des organismes aux artefacts (edited book)
    with Armand de Ricqlès
    Presses universitaires de France. 2010.
    Omniprésente dans l'ensemble des sciences de la vie, la catégorie de fonction a les allures d'un scandale épistémologique : attribuer une fonction à une structure ou à un processus biologique, c'est en effet suggérer qu'on l'explique par ses effets. Cet ouvrage, sans précédent en langue française examine les débats philosophiques contemporains sur les fonctions depuis une trentaine d'années, et propose de nouvelles voies d'analyse. Il confronte ces débats à l'usage de la notion de fonction dans …Read more
  •  188
    Economic Natural Selection: What Concept of Selection?
    Biological Theory 6 (4): 320-325. 2011.
    The article examines two cases of adoption of evolutionary ways of thinking by modern economists: Nelson and Winter’s (Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, 1982), and evolutionary game theory (1990s and after). In both cases, the authors explicitly refer to natural selection in an economic context. I show that natural selection is taken in two different senses, which correspond to two general conceptions of the principle of natural selection, one of which contains reproduction and heredity as…Read more
  •  180
    The singular fate of genetics in the history of French biology, 1900?1940
    with Richard Burian and Doris Zallen
    Journal of the History of Biology 21 (3): 357-402. 1988.
    In this study we have examined the reception of Mendelism in France from 1900 to 1940, and the place of some of the extra-Mendelian traditions of research that contributed to the development of genetics in France after World War II.
  •  157
    Since the 1970s, there has been a tremendous amount of literature on Ghiselin's proposal that species are individuals. After recalling the origins and stakes of this thesis in contemporary evolutionary theory, I show that it can also be found in the writings of the French naturalist Buffon in the 18th Century. Although Buffon did not have the conception that one species could be derived from another, there is an interesting similarity between the modern argument and that of Buffon regarding the …Read more
  •  83
    Nietzsche and Darwin
    In Jane Maienschein & Michael Ruse (eds.), Biology and the foundation of ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 154--197. 1999.
    There is no doubt that Nietzsche, the most famous philosopher of the second half of the nineteenth century, was concerned with Darwin. This essay aims to provide a systematic evaluation of Nietzsche's work in those areas in which he felt the necessity to position himself with regard to Darwin, or "Darwinism," as he knew it.
  •  9
    Hérédité des caractères acquis
    In Pietro Corsi (ed.), Lamarck, Philosophe de la Nature, Presses Universitaires De France. pp. 105--163. 2006.
  •  23
    In Darwinism's Struggle for Survival Jean Gayon offers a philosophical interpretation of the history of theoretical Darwinism. He begins by examining the different forms taken by the hypothesis of natural selection in the nineteenth century and the major difficulties which it encountered, particularly with regard to its compatibility with the theory of heredity. He then shows how these difficulties were overcome during the seventy years which followed the publication of Darwin's Origin of Specie…Read more
  •  157
    Chance, Explanation, and Causation in Evolutionary Theory
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4). 2005.
    Chance comes into plays at many levels of the explanation of the evolutionary process; but the unity of sense of this category is problematic. The purpose of this talk is to clarify the meaning of chance at various levels in evolutionary theory: mutations, genetic drift, genetic revolutions, ecosystems, macroevolution. Three main concepts of chance are found at these various levels: luck (popular concept), randomness (probabilistic concept), and contingency relative to a given theoretical system…Read more
  •  9
    What does' Darwinism'mean?
    Ludus Vitalis 2 (2): 105-118. 1994.
  •  29
    L'épistémologie française, 1830-1970 (edited book)
    Presses universitaires de France. 2006.
    Présentation de la spécificité de l'épistémologie en France, entre philosophie de la connaissance et philosophie des sciences, à travers un panorama de son histoire depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, de ses grands courants et de ses grandes figures : A. Comte, A. Cournot, C. Bernard, G. Bachelard, H. Poincaré, etc.
  •  11
    Raisonnement fonctionnel et niveaux d'intégration en biologie
    In Jean Gayon & Armand de Ricqlès (eds.), Les fonctions: des organismes aux artefacts, Presses Universitaires De France. pp. 125--138. 2010.
  •  17
    Le paradigme de la filiation
    with Jean-Jacques Wunenburger
    Editions L'Harmattan. 1995.
  • Edited volumes-Bachelard dans le monde
    with Jean-Jacques Wunenburger
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 22 (3): 453. 2000.
  • Darwin et l'Après Darwin
    Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1): 161-163. 1994.
  •  32
    Direction de revue : Comptes rendus Biologies, vol. 333, n°2, 2010.
  •  150
    On the Uses of the Category of Style in the History of Science
    Philosophy and Rhetoric 32 (3). 1999.
  •  489
    Cultural evolution: A general appraisal
    Ludus Vitalis 13 (23): 139-150. 2005.
    The first objective of the paper is to propose a classification and characterize the major approaches to the modes of cultural evolution: (1) Research programs on the origins of the cultural capacity of the human species. (2) Description and explanation of cultural change with the help of concepts or models inspired by the schemes of population genetics. (3) Research on parallel evolution of genes and culture. (4) Narrow coupling between biological evolution and cultural evolution, or the “gene-…Read more
  •  15
    Introduction
    with Brenner Anastasios
    Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71. 2008.
  •  101
    The Concept of Individuality in Canguilhem's Philosophy of Biology
    Journal of the History of Biology 31 (3). 1998.
    This paper does not intend to provide an exhaustive account of Canguilhem's thinking. It will focus on his philosophical approach to the biological sciences
  •  4
    Le paradigme de la filiation
    with Jean-Jacques Wunenburger
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 187 (2): 250-250. 1997.
  •  40
    10 From Darwin to today in evolutionary biology
    In Jonathan Hodge & Gregory Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge University Press. pp. 240. 2003.
  • Bachelard dans le monde
    with Jean-Jacques Wunenburger
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 190 (4): 525-525. 2000.
  •  89
    Évolution et hasard
    Laval Théologique et Philosophique 61 (3): 527-537. 2005.
    Dans la théorie contemporaine de l’évolution, trois sens classiques de la notion de hasard interviennent : la notion ordinaire de chance, la notion probabiliste de l’aléatoire, et la notion épistémologique de contingence relativement à un système théorique. Ces trois notions suffisent à définir le statut du hasard aux principaux niveaux du processus évolutif où l’on invoque communément des effets fortuits : mutations, dérive génétique, révolutions génétiques, changements écologiques, macroévolut…Read more