David Cortés-García

Reproduction is widely regarded as a key concept in biology and considered fundamental to life as we know it. However, it is often framed narrowly in terms of heredity (primarily genetic transmission) and epistemically confined to measuring differential fitness. This reductive perspective fails to account for the material and relational causal processes involved in organismal continuity and renewal. In a broad sense, reproduction is the process through which living entities produce new individuals of their kind. However, the phenomenon of biological renewal is expressed through various terms rooted in different theoretical traditions. These include generation, reproduction, replication, regeneration, and reconstitution, each offering different, though often overlapping, views of the process. The term “reproduction” emerged in biology in the mid-eighteenth century, replacing “generation” and shifting the view of life from isolated creation of entities to lineage-based continuity (Etxeberria, 2023; Jacob, 1970). Whereas reproduction encompasses organismallevel processes of generating offspring, later on, with the development of molecular biology, it was often overtaken by “replication,” which focuses on the copying of genetic material (Wilkins and Bourrat, 2022). In contrast, recent philosophy of biology argues, from a developmental point of view, that reproduction includes the entire process throughout an organism’s life cycle, not just gamete or zygote formation (Griesemer, 2016). This broader perspective extends to concepts like “regeneration,” which used to refer to the restoration of lost or damaged organs and limbs, but now includes ecosystem recovery (Maienschein and MacCord, 2022). Lastly, “reconstitution” refers to phenomena of system recreation beyond lineage or genealogical continuity in holobionts and microbial symbioses; it emphasizes the dynamic interplay of relationships and processes that restore phenotypic variants through time (Veigl et al., 2022).

El embarazo es un tema relativamente novedoso en los debates filosóficos. Introducido fundamentalmente desde perspectivas feministas, plantea desafíos a las posiciones tradicionales. Consideramos que la exploración de estas cuestiones es especialmente para la filosofía de la biología, pues obliga a reconsiderar la naturaleza de la reproducción, así como la concepción convencional de la biología del embarazo, y a revisar cómo la literatura más reciente sobre su evolución obliga a cambiar el modelo. Este trabajo sostiene que el estudio filosófico del embarazo tiene el potencial de transformar significativamente los debates actuales en la filosofía de la biología. En particular, puede reformular nuestra comprensión de los organismos y sus procesos, afectando conceptos clave como la individualidad, las relaciones inter-organísmicas, la temporalidad, la historicidad y la fisión. Pregnancy is a relatively new topic in philosophical debates. Introduced mainly by feminist perspectives, it raises issues that constitute challenges to traditional positions in philosophy. We examine some of these related to pregnancy, such as the subject and experience, ontologies, the problem of counting entities, and origin or birth. The discussion of these questions is relevant to the philosophy of biology. As such, it forces us to reconsider the problem of reproduction as well as the conventional conception of the biology of pregnancy, and to review how the more recent literature on its evolution forces us to change the model. On this basis, the main argument of this paper is that the question of pregnancy has an enormous potential to influence and suggest changes in current arguments in the philosophy of biology, mainly in the conceptions involved in the understanding of organisms and their processes, such as individuality, relationa-lity and temporality, historicity and fission.

This chapter encompasses a discussion about the understanding of reproduction in the theory of autonomy, emphasizing the need to expand traditional theories of autonomous self-reproduction to account for interorganismal and ecological interactions. Drawing from recent contributions in the philosophy of biology, the chapter examines some of the limitations of self-reproduction as an endogenous process derived from self-production, highlighting cases such as sexual reproduction or symbiotic dependencies that illustrate the relational and interactive nature of reproduction. I then argue for an extended framework that integrates relational dependencies and distributed organizational processes.

This paper examines evolutionary ontologies from Darwin’s work to the genesis and maturation of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, followed by the onset of the more inclusive framework of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. We show how, in an attempt to unify different biological fields under evolutionary principles, the first synthetic theory of evolution progressively disregarded the relevance of organismic-level properties and processes. Yet, failure to reduce the systemic nature and ecological dynamics of the organism (including properties of agency and organization) to that framework raises some important drawbacks. In particular, the two fundamental dimensions of developmental and ecological dynamics were largely neglected. These are the ones that highlight the relational properties of organisms and lead to recent views in, respectively, Evo-Devo and Niche Construction Theory. On this account, we argue that these two aspects illuminate how, while the Modern Synthesis became increasingly reductionist and monistic, the Extended Synthesis is currently being constituted by a pluralistic array of models capable of accommodating different ontological levels, among which that of organisms stands out due to its flexibility and potential inclusiveness.

This paper aims to propose an inferential and dynamic approach to understanding with models in biology. Understanding plays a central role in the practice of modeling. From its links with the other two central elements of scientific research, experimentation, and explanation, we show its epistemic relevance to the case of explanation in biology. Furthermore, by including the notion of understanding, we propose a non-referentialist perspective on scientific models, which is determined by their use.

This paper aims to propose an inferential and dynamic approach to understanding with models in biology. Understanding plays a central role in the practice of modeling. From its links with the other two central elements of scientific research, experimentation, and explanation, we show its epistemic relevance to the case of explanation in biology. Furthermore, by including the notion of understanding, we propose a non-referentialist perspective on scientific models, which is determined by their use.

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 projects lies in its dynamic organizational features.

This paper delves into the character concept as applied to reproduction. Our argument is that the prevailing functional-adaptationist perspective falls short in explaining the evolution of reproductive traits, and we propose an alternative organismal-relational approach that incorporates the developmental and interactive aspects of reproduction. To begin, we define the functional individuation of reproductive traits as evolutionary strategies aimed at enhancing fitness, and we demonstrate how this perspective influences the classification of reproductive characters and modes, the comprehension of shared traits as resulting from conflicts of evolutionary interest between individuals, and the explanation of reproductive diversity. After outlining the shortcomings of this framework, we introduce an organismal-relational approach grounded in evolutionary developmental studies of reproduction. This view provides a revised classification for reproductive characters and modes and offers a new understanding of interorganismal traits that takes into account their inherently relational nature. Lastly, we present the research agenda that emerges from this approach, which addresses the core explanatory gaps left by the adaptationist perspective, including the explanation of reproductive homologies and homoplasies, the developmental constraints associated with the evolution of reproductive modes, and the evolvability of reproductive characters.

In this paper we analyze some particular characteristics of evo-devo scientific modeling, starting from a brief analysis of the Polypterus model, which is put forward as an explanatory model of the role of developmental plasticity in the evolutionary origin of tetrapods. Evo-devo has brought about an interesting change in the way we understand evolution and it is also posing new challenges for understanding scientific explanation, modeling, experimentation, and the ontological commitments that scientists take on when making theoretical generalizations. Specially in biology, it is necessary to take into account some relevant aspects of modeling that go beyond representation, explanation and the stress on causal relations between phenomena. We approach this type of explanation by accounting for understanding and its relationship to modeling in biology. Thus, our main aim is to elaborate some minimum criteria required to this kind of evo-devo models, so they provide us with effective understanding.