This workshop stems from the recent publication of a book co-edited with Charles Wolfe, Philosophy of biology before biology (Routledge, 2019). It aims at gathering people involved in the field to debate some current issues in the way history and philosophy should be articulated in order to contribute to our understanding of biology, past and present – its concepts, theories and problems these are supposed to solve.

We find the way in which current philosophy of biology crystallized around a core set of concepts and problems tied to evolutionary biology to be problematic, namely in the way it does not reflect the wealth and diversity of philosophical problems contained in past and contemporary biology. In that sense, one of the goals of the present workshop is to create some distance with regard to the “problem space“ that seems to have been imposed on us by a certain history of biology, with its highlighted or heroic entities such as the organism or the gene. 

Speakers: Cécilia Bognon (Labex Who am I?), François Duchesneau (U. Montréal), Arantza Etxeberria (UPV/EHU), Philippe Huneman (CNRS, IHPST), Laurent Loison (CNRS, IHPST), Francesca Merlin (CNRS, IHPST), Alvaro Moreno (UPV/EHU), Matteo Mossio (CNRS, IHPST), Thomas Pradeu (CNRS, ImmunoConcept), Denis Walsh (U. Toronto), Charles T. Wolfe (U. Gent)

Programme: 

9h30: Introduction, Cécilia Bognon-Küss (Labex Who am I ?, U. Paris Diderot) et Charles T. Wolfe (U. Gent)

10h: Laurent Loison (CNRS, IHPST): “History as philosophy. On the necessary relationship between biology and the history of biology”

10h45: Pause café

11h: Francesca Merlin (CNRS, IHPST): “History and philosophy of biology (HPB) & Philosophy of Biology (PB): two rival traditions?”

11h45:Thomas Pradeu (CNRS, ImmunoConcept) et Maël Lemoine (Université de Bordeaux) : “A novel mapping of an old field: Philosophy ‘in’ biology and medicine”

12h30: Déjeuner  

14h: François Duchesneau (U. Montréal) “The fate of organized bodies in proto-biology”

14h45: Arantza Etxeberria (U. of the Basque Country): “Biological reproduction from organizational and evolutionary perspectives”

15h30: Pause café 

15h45: Matteo Mossio (CNRS, IHPST): “Are final causes barren? On why Francis Bacon might be wrong, after all”

16h30: Alvaro Moreno (U. of the Basque Country): “Some reflections about the question ‘What is Life?’: from Schrodinger until now”

17h15: Denis Walsh (U. Toronto) et Philippe Huneman (CNRS, IHPST) Remarques conclusives et discussion générale