History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Two kinds of evolutionary individuals: the concept of common interest as an evolutionary foundation of dualism on biological individuality.","authors":"Adrian Stencel","doi":"10.1007/s40656-026-00721-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-026-00721-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>What is a biological individual? This is a question that has been of interest to biologists and philosophers for a long time. The usual response is an attempt either to find a single, unifying concept (a monistic stance) or to justify the existence of multiple concepts, for instance, by referring to scientific practice (a pluralistic stance). In this paper, I adopt a pluralistic stance and focus on evolutionary studies. I argue that in the context of evolutionary biology we need to distinguish between two kinds of evolutionary individuals, based on the concept of common interest. I decouple this into common interest by necessity (CIN) and common interest by contingency (CIC), and argue that this division corresponds to two kinds of evolutionary individuals. To situate the framework I thus develop within the context of ongoing discussions, I then compare it with frameworks corresponding to other concepts commonly found in the relevant literature, such as those concerning units of selection and agency. The conclusion is that the ontology of evolutionary biology is more complex than often assumed, and that we should distinguish: units of selection, agents, and two kinds of evolutionary individuals.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12932402/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147286054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What was really wrong (and right) with vitalism? Methodological naturalism, organicism and immaterialist theories in biology.","authors":"Sandy C Boucher","doi":"10.1007/s40656-026-00719-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-026-00719-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>There has been considerable discussion in recent years of methodological naturalism in the sciences: the question of whether science does, or should, operate under the assumption that it may only investigate natural phenomena or offer natural explanations, and what form this assumption does or should take. Most of the discussion has centred around theories such as intelligent design creationism, but in this paper I argue that vitalism in biology-an immaterialist theory of living systems-provides an instructive and under-utilised test-case for methodological naturalism. I focus on three views: intrinsic methodological naturalism, provisional/pragmatic methodological naturalism, and, in particular, the 'unintelligibility' view I have previously defended: views which have not, for the most part, been applied to vitalism. The unintelligibility view comes in a metaphysical, and an epistemic form. I suggest that on the epistemic interpretation theories such as vitalism should be understood along the lines of 'mysterian' or 'ignorance' accounts of consciousness, and that this provides an illuminating account both of vitalism itself, and of its relationship to organicism in biology.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12932404/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147286106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Natural selection no vera causa? Bradley (2022) as a new emanation of an old dichotomy.","authors":"Koen B Tanghe","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00713-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00713-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In his paper ‘Natural selection according to Darwin: Cause or effect?’ (History Philos Life Sci 44, 2022), Ben Bradley argues that Charles Darwin did not regard natural selection as a cause or ‘cause in itself’ of evolution, as modern proponents of the modern evolutionary synthesis (MS) do. Instead, like proponents of developmental or active Darwinism, he saw natural selection as a higher-order effect of other causal processes. Bradley’s central and more specific claim is that historians who believe that Darwin regarded natural selection as the vera causa (true cause) of evolution have been misled by the MS. In reality, Darwin believed that natural selection was at the heart of a so-called consilience of inductions, which was central to William Whewell’s methodology. In Bradley’s view, this implies that he did not regard it as a cause and vera causa of evolution. However, both the new distinction that Bradley makes between consilient hypotheses and causes, and the existing distinction that he tries to exploit between consilient hypotheses and verae causae, are incorrect. In reality, consilient hypotheses were causal and they were regarded as verae causae. In stark contrast to what Bradley claims, Darwin’s own statements on natural selection illustrate this: he defended natural selection as a vera causa of evolution, largely because it was a consilient cause. Bradley’s thesis is deeply flawed, but the great merit of his paper is that it has brought the consilience/vera causa dichotomy into the limelight, challenging us to investigate how it arose and what role it has played in the literature.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"10"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146159493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Studying asphyxiation in the lab: the role of experimental evidence in cause-of-death inquiry.","authors":"Enno Fischer, Saana Jukola","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00712-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00712-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Like most scientific and medical disciplines, forensic medicine employs evidence from experimental studies. Yet, unlike most disciplines, forensic medicine is primarily interested in the post-hoc evaluation of individual causal claims. How does experimental work that is performed under laboratory conditions bear on the assessment of field cases? We argue that experimental studies in forensic medicine help identify or exclude potential causes of death. Potential causes will not explain why an individual died. Yet they can be important to rebut claims to the impossibility of a certain course of events. We support our argument by looking at experimental studies of asphyxiation. These studies have been central to recent academic and public debate of death-in-custody. While some take the studies to show that restraint positions employed by law enforcement can cause death, others dispute this. We analyze the causal claims put forward by experimental asphyxiation studies and show that some attempts to disprove the risks associated with restraint positions involve 'false advertising': a mismatch between the study's methodology and its purported goals.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"9"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12815992/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145999502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Charles Pence, Integrative promise: explanatory virtues in biology, Springer (Synthese Library), 2025.","authors":"Ingo Brigandt","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00717-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-025-00717-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"8"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145968098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Virtual oceans: how VR technologies mediate oceanic space.","authors":"Jesse Peterson","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00714-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00714-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In marine science, VR technologies are being used to model underwater space and enable virtual geoscience fieldtrips for teaching and research. The vast potential in adapting these technologies alongside their speedy application suggests challenges in relation to the standardization of these technologies and what forms of representation come to matter in these contexts. This raises the question regarding how the use of VR technologies produce and transfer knowledge about marine environments. To address this question, I explore VR technologies as tools for mediating human-ocean relations, analyzing processes and technologies used in marine science to produce VR models and digital environments of oceanic spaces that give meaning to the marine. Doing so, I argue that VR technologies flatten the vast materiality of the oceans to create an illusion of depth that is anchored in the \"objectivity\" of the visual. Additionally, VR oceans currently represent a shift from other representations of the oceans as global or planetary, as they are being used to assist the production of local, place-based engagements of the seas, specifically through positionality and spatial awareness (aka proprioception), which differs from previous representations of the sea based on sight.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"7"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12799643/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145960961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Correction: Regulation in ecological systems: an overview.","authors":"Clarissa Machado Pinto Leite, Ítalo Nascimento de Carvalho, Jeferson Gabriel da Encarnação Coutinho, Charbel N El-Hani","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00715-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00715-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"6"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12789198/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145936389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Embracing environmental DNA? How values influence the integration of a new technology into an oceanographic expedition.","authors":"Meghan Marjorie Shea","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00692-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00692-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Environmental DNA (eDNA)-genetic material left behind by organisms in their ecosystems-has been increasingly positioned as an important tool for studying biodiversity, especially in marine environments. Advances in genetic methods now allow scientists to filter eDNA from seawater and use molecular tools to sequence it, generating a catalog of organisms likely present in the ecosystem without ever seeing them. Thus, eDNA sampling differs substantially from conventional biodiversity monitoring approaches that rely on visual observation-both opening new realms of monitoring while also coming into conflict with different ways of knowing and sensing marine ecosystems. How do researchers navigate the promises and pitfalls of an emerging technology such as eDNA? In this paper, I conduct a case study of an oceanographic expedition incorporating eDNA sampling for the first time to understand how researchers negotiate the perceived benefits and challenges of adopting this emergent research repertoire. Through semi-structured interviews with 30 participants, I use a valuographic approach to characterize how researchers describe the desirable outcomes they hope to achieve via eDNA monitoring. Overall, I find that researchers articulated several broad outcomes they were hoping to achieve using eDNA approaches: ocean discovery and exploration, organism measurement and identification, comparisons across time and space, and policy and management applications. However, these outcomes and their interconnections were also disputed. Researchers surfaced practical challenges such as methodological constraints and cost, epistemic tensions surrounding the shift away from visual identification, and skepticism about the validity of eDNA-based comparisons. Moreover, researchers rarely discussed broader societal or ethical implications of eDNA approaches, underscoring a gap in consideration of its role beyond scientific inquiry. By characterizing these value-driven dissonances, this study illuminates potential barriers to eDNA's widespread adoption and reveals how methodological and epistemic tensions can shape the proliferation of new scientific approaches more broadly.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"5"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145822121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The evolution of the biosphere: Vladimir I. Vernadsky and the concept of common evolution.","authors":"Bogdana Stamenković Jajčević","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00703-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00703-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The growing interest in astrobiology renewed the enthusiasm of contemporary scholars to explore the Earth Systems Science theories of the twentieth century and scholars who influenced the later development of astrobiology. Vladimir I. Vernadsky seems to be recognized as one such scholar. In this paper, I provide an analysis of one such theory, Vladimir I. Vernadsky's theory of the biosphere, and explore his conception of evolution in nature. I begin my research with the presentation of Vernadsky's conceptual framework by explaining the meaning of the term \"biosphere\" and identifying the fundamental assumptions of his holistic theory. Next, I turn to the analysis of the concepts of living and inert matter, questioning their distinction and mutual relations. Whilst the differences between living and inert matter should enable us to demarcate these two domains of the biosphere and distinguish them at the ontological and conceptual levels, it seems that such an objective remains unattainable for Vernadsky. I find the reason for this conclusion in Vernadsky's endorsement of a specific relation of reciprocal causality between living and inert matter. As I show, the relation of reciprocal causality emphasises the causal activity of the living matter and unifies it with the inert matter of the biosphere, leading to the unique conception of the common evolution of the living and inert matter, i.e., the evolution of the biosphere. However, Vernadsky's synthesis of living and inert matter causes certain difficulties in the theory, reflected in our inability to clearly differentiate between living and inert matter at the ontological and conceptual levels.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"4"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145812365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Creative environmental engineering' and the cost of environmental claims: legitimisation of tire artificial reefs by us federal scientists in 1960s-1970s.","authors":"D Porsnovs","doi":"10.1007/s40656-025-00700-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-025-00700-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Between 1966 and 1974, the US Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife carried out research on the possibilities of using waste materials for constructing artificial reefs. One of the main outcomes was the recommendation to construct reefs from waste tires. With the encouragement of the findings, more than 700 reefs containing tens of millions of tires were built along the US Atlantic seaboard. This article investigates the artificial reef study at Sandy Hook Marine Laboratory and analyses environmental claims built on its results. The results show that fisheries scientists involved in artificial reef research framed tire artificial reefs as a solution to two problems: recreational fishing enhancement and waste disposal. Their claims about the appropriateness of tire reefs became a driving force of their construction in the US.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"48 1","pages":"3"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12711981/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145769830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}