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Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives
Scott Lidgard
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Description for Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives
Paperback. Editor(s): Lidgard, Scott; Nyhart, Lynn K. Num Pages: 400 pages, 14 halftones, 2 tables. BIC Classification: PDA. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 228 x 152. .
Individuals are things that everybody knows or thinks they do. Yet even scholars who practice or analyze the biological sciences often cannot agree on what an individual is and why. One reason for this disagreement is that the many important biological individuality concepts serve very different purposes defining, classifying, or explaining living structure, function, interaction, persistence, or evolution. Indeed, as the contributors to Biological Individuality reveal, nature is too messy for simple definitions of this concept, organisms too quirky in the diverse ways they reproduce, function, and interact, and human ideas about individuality too fraught with philosophical and historical meaning. Bringing together biologists, historians, and philosophers, this book provides a multifaceted exploration of biological individuality that identifies leading and less familiar perceptions of individuality both past and present, what they are good for, and in what contexts. Biological practice and theory recognize individuals at myriad levels of organization, from genes to organisms to symbiotic systems. We depend on these notions of individuality to address theoretical questions about multilevel natural selection and Darwinian fitness; to illuminate empirical questions about development, function, and ecology; to ground philosophical questions about the nature of organisms and causation; and to probe historical and cultural circumstances that resonate with parallel questions about the nature of society. Charting an interdisciplinary research agenda that broadens the frameworks in which biological individuality is discussed, this book makes clear that in the realm of the individual, there is not and should not be a direct path from biological paradigms based on model organisms through to philosophical generalization and historical reification.
Product Details
Publisher
University Of Chicago Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2017
Condition
New
Number of Pages
400
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226446455
SKU
V9780226446455
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1
About Scott Lidgard
Scott Lidgard is the MacArthur Associate Curator of Fossil Invertebrates in the Integrative Research Center at the Field Museum, Chicago, and a lecturer in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago. He is coeditor of Evolutionary Patterns: Growth, Form and Tempo in the Fossil Record, also published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Skokie, IL. Lynn K. Nyhart is the Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement Professor of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She is the author, most recently, of Modern Nature: The Rise of the Biological Perspective in Germany, also published by the University of Chicago Press. She lives in Madison, WI.
Reviews for Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives
Lidgard and Nyhart have compiled a superb collection of essays concerning recent work on the concept and nature of biological individuals. . . . The overarching question 'What is a biological individual?' is demonstrated to have an intricate history, changing and evolving as biologists learned more about organismic structures and functions, life cycles, cellular systems, and ecological interactions. Notions of what counts as an individual are shown to have carried over into social and political identities and practices. In addition, philosophical, conceptual underpinnings and commitments are shown to interplay with these changing biological understandings. . . . The volume is marvelous! While not for the casual reader, it is exemplary of the best current work in biological philosophy. . . . Highly recommended.
D. B. Boersema, Pacific University Choice I found this collection a very enjoyable read and recommend it as a starting point to anyone interested in the notion of biological individuality broadly construed and interested in understanding what unifies and separates the different meanings of this term across time and disciplines.
Pierrick Bourrat, Macquarie University Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews A tour de force inquiry of individuality that proposes a fruitful perspective that potentially resolves many of its disparate definitions. Biological Individuality reflects the strengths of cross-disciplinary research on fundamental biological concepts.
Paul Lawrence Farber, Oregon State University, emeritus, author of Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson Individuality is one of the hottest topics in the philosophy of biology today. The recent, technologically driven explosion of knowledge about the microbial world has led both biologists and philosophers to reconsider the traditional idea that organisms are genetically uniform populations of cells with a clear physical boundary
bodies. Very up-to-date, containing a number of substantial original contributions, and with a good balance of historians, philosophers, and eminent scientists, Biological Individuality is well positioned to represent the most exciting strands of the current debate.
Paul Griffiths, University of Sydney, coauthor of Genetics and Philosophy: An Introduction
D. B. Boersema, Pacific University Choice I found this collection a very enjoyable read and recommend it as a starting point to anyone interested in the notion of biological individuality broadly construed and interested in understanding what unifies and separates the different meanings of this term across time and disciplines.
Pierrick Bourrat, Macquarie University Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews A tour de force inquiry of individuality that proposes a fruitful perspective that potentially resolves many of its disparate definitions. Biological Individuality reflects the strengths of cross-disciplinary research on fundamental biological concepts.
Paul Lawrence Farber, Oregon State University, emeritus, author of Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson Individuality is one of the hottest topics in the philosophy of biology today. The recent, technologically driven explosion of knowledge about the microbial world has led both biologists and philosophers to reconsider the traditional idea that organisms are genetically uniform populations of cells with a clear physical boundary
bodies. Very up-to-date, containing a number of substantial original contributions, and with a good balance of historians, philosophers, and eminent scientists, Biological Individuality is well positioned to represent the most exciting strands of the current debate.
Paul Griffiths, University of Sydney, coauthor of Genetics and Philosophy: An Introduction