
The Units of Life
Kinds of Individual in Biology
Ellen Clarke(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 12. June 2025
Book
Hardback
288 pages
978-0-19-285719-4 (ISBN)
Description
Where are the edges of a tree? What makes arms different from daughters? What have corals got in common with Necker cubes? Biological individuality has become a dizzying topic since researchers began, at the turn of the millennium, to realize that we can't go on taking organisms for granted as basic particles of the living world.
Ellen Clarke takes us on a disorienting romp through the natural world and argues that our way of conceptualizing living things-of understanding life as carved up into separate chunks-is best understood as an idealization.
Vivid examples animate some fairly arcane philosophical topics concerning identity over time, natural kinds, and the fundamental furniture of reality, as well as serious biological issues concerning natural selection, the emergence of compositional hierarchies, and the evolution of cooperation. Readers will come away with newfound respect for humankind's ingenuity in engineering concepts that make sense of the complex and ever-changing wonders of life on earth.
Ellen Clarke takes us on a disorienting romp through the natural world and argues that our way of conceptualizing living things-of understanding life as carved up into separate chunks-is best understood as an idealization.
Vivid examples animate some fairly arcane philosophical topics concerning identity over time, natural kinds, and the fundamental furniture of reality, as well as serious biological issues concerning natural selection, the emergence of compositional hierarchies, and the evolution of cooperation. Readers will come away with newfound respect for humankind's ingenuity in engineering concepts that make sense of the complex and ever-changing wonders of life on earth.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
24, including 16 in colour
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
635 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-285719-4 (9780192857194)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ellen Clarke is a Philosopher of Biology with interests in evolutionary theory, scientific metaphysics and ontology, moral and cultural evolution, evolutionary game theory, and conservation ecology. She has two children and is Associate Professor at the University of Leeds, having got her PhD in Bristol and then held postdoctoral positions at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Vienna, and at All Souls College, University of Oxford.
Content
Part I. FINDING OUR TARGET
1: What Is the Problem?
2: Setting the Stage
Part II. HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
3: Evolutionary Individuals
4: Individuals in Transition
5: Other Kinds of Biological Individual
Part III. LEARNING LESSONS
6: Biological Identity and Other Metaphysical Issues
7: Extensions
Conclusions
1: What Is the Problem?
2: Setting the Stage
Part II. HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM
3: Evolutionary Individuals
4: Individuals in Transition
5: Other Kinds of Biological Individual
Part III. LEARNING LESSONS
6: Biological Identity and Other Metaphysical Issues
7: Extensions
Conclusions