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10What is Special about Natural Drift as an Organism-Centered View of EvolutionConstructivist Foundations 18 (1): 107-109. 2022.Jorge Mpodozis presents natural drift as an organism-centered view of biological evolution. Currently, many other research programs in biology and philosophy of biology pursue organismic perspectives in evolution. We consider some of the features appearing in the article in this light in order to highlight what is special in Mpodozis’s proposal. We contend that collaborations among research programs would be valuable and suggest that the major contribution of natural drift for organismic project…Read more
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13Understanding the knowledge and practice of medicine: papers from the fourth Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable (review)Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (4): 253-257. 2013.
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17Pregnant Females as Historical Individuals: An Insight From the Philosophy of Evo-DevoFrontiers in Psychology 11 572106. 2021.Criticisms of the “container” model of pregnancy picturing female and embryo as separate entities multiply in various philosophical and scientific contexts during the last decades. In this paper, we examine how this model underlies received views of pregnancy in evolutionary biology, in the characterization of the transition from oviparity to viviparity in mammals and in the selectionist explanations of pregnancy as an evolutionary strategy. In contrast, recent evo-devo studies on eutherian repr…Read more
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15Canguilhem and the Logic of LifeIn Christopher Donohue & Charles T. Wolfe (eds.), Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy, Springer Verlag. pp. 131-151. 2022.We examine aspects of Canguilhem’s philosophy of biology, concerning the knowledge of life and its consequences on science and vitalism. His concept of life stems from the idea of a living individual endowed with creative subjectivity and norms, a Kantian view which “disconcerts logic.” In contrast, we examine two naturalistic perspectives in the 1970s exploring the logic of life (JacobJacob, François) and the logic of the living individual (MaturanaMaturana, Humberto and VarelaVarela, Francisco…Read more
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7R ussell B onduriansky & T roy D ay, Extended heredity : a new understanding of inheritance and evolution, Princeton University Press, 2018, 288 pp, ISBN 9780691157672 (review)History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (3): 33. 2019.
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140Systems, AutopoieticIn Dubitzsky, Wolkenhauer, Cho & Yokota (eds.), Encyclopedia of Systems Biology, Springer. pp. 2110-2113. 2013.Definition The authors’ definition of the autopoietic system has evolved through the years. One of them states that an autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (1) through their interactions and transformations regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (2) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in wh…Read more
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12In the evolutionary biology of the Modern Synthesis the study of patterns refers to how to identify and systematise order in lineages, looking for hierarchies or for branching/splitting events in the tree of life, whereas the resulting order is supposed to be due to underlying processes or mechanisms. But patterns and processes play distinct roles in evo-devo: four different views on the role of patterns and processes in descriptions and explanations of development and evolution: A) transformati…Read more
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6Pattern and Process in evo-devoIn Henk W. De Regt, Stephan Hartmann & Samir Okasha (eds.), EPSA Philosophy of Science: Amsterdam 2009, Springer. pp. 263-274. 2011.In the Modern Synthesis the study of patterns refers to how to identify and systematize order in lineages (description), attributed to underlying processes or mechanisms (explanation). But patterns and processes play distinct roles in evodevo. In this paper we (1) distinguish three different views (the transformational, the morphogenetic and the process approach) according to the role they play in the description and explanation of development and evolution, and (2) relate this discussion to the…Read more
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9La idea de autonomía en biologíaLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 40 21-37. 2007.The aim of this article is to examine how the notion of biological autonomy may be linked to other notions of autonomy usual in philosophical discussions. Starting in the 70s, the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela developed a theory of life as autopoiesis which gives rise to a new conception of autonomy: biological autonomy. The development of this concept implies the recovery of the notion of the organism in a scientific context in which biology and philosophy of biology…Read more
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8Pere Alberch: Originator of EvoDevoBiological Theory 3 (4): 351-356. 2008.In September 2008, 10 years after the untimely death of Pere Alberch (1954–1998), the 20th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology gathered a group of Pere’s students, col- laborators, and colleagues (Figure 1) to celebrate his contribu- tions to the origins of EvoDevo. Hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) outside Vienna, the group met for two days of discussion. The meeting was organized in tandem with a congress held in May 2008 at the Cavanilles I…Read more
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14Sobre Bíos y Éthos. Un enfoque contemporáneoLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 40 3. 2007.