
Everything Flows
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Content
- Cover
- Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Contributors
- Foreword
- References
- PART I: Introduction
- 1: A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Historical Background
- 3. The Organicist Precedent
- 4. Processes and Things
- 5. Empirical Motivations
- 5.1. Metabolic turnover
- 5.2. Life cycles
- 5.3. Ecological interdependence
- 6. Philosophical Payoffs
- 6.1. Grounding critiques of essentialism
- 6.2. Grounding critiques of reductionism
- 6.3. Grounding critiques of mechanicism
- 7. Biological Consequences
- 7.1. Physiology
- 7.2. Genetics
- 7.3. Evolution
- 7.4. Medicine
- 8. Conclusions
- 9. Overview of Contributions
- References
- PART II: Metaphysics
- 2: Processes and Precipitates
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The Continuant/Occurrent Duality
- 3. Specification
- 4. The Priority Question
- 5. Reasons to Take Processes as Fundamental
- 6. (Just a Few) Kinds of Processes in Biology
- 7. Continuants out of Processes
- 8. Abstraction
- 9. Abstracting to Continuants
- 10. Modal Properties
- 11. Consequences for Biology
- References
- 3: Dispositionalism: A Dynamic Theory of Causation
- 1. A Received Orthodoxy
- 2. Causation in Biology
- 3. Dispositions and Processes
- 4. Static or Dynamic?
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 4: Biological Processes: Criteria of Identity and Persistence
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Ontological Explanation for Scientific Domains
- 3. An Argument for Biological Process Ontology
- 4. Criteria of Identity and the Individuation of Processes
- 5. Process Persistence: Identity versus Composition
- 5.1. The endurance of substances
- 5.2. The perdurance of processes
- 6. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 5: Genidentity and Biological Processes
- 1. Introduction
- 2. What Is Genidentity? And How Can It Be Applied to the Living World?
- 3. The Inconspicuous Centrality of Genidentity in Hull's Conception of Biological Individuality
- 4. Why Cases of Symbiosis Strengthen the Genidentity View
- 5. How Genidentity Helps Define What an Organism Is
- 6. Genidentity as a Way to Shed Light on the Notion of Biological Process: 'Priority' as the Central Question
- 7. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 6: Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology: Some Basic Notions of General Process Theory
- 1. Introduction
- 2. General Processes or Dynamics: A New Category
- 3. Relationships among General Processes: GPT's 'Levelled Mereology'
- 4. A Typology of Processes
- 4.1. Spatio-temporal signature
- 4.2. Participant structure
- 4.3. Dynamic composition
- 4.4. Dynamic shape
- 4.5. Dynamic context
- 5. Applying GPT in the Philosophy of Biology
- 5.1. Biological individuality
- 5.2. Biological composition
- 5.3. Emergence
- 6. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- PART III: Organisms
- 7: Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Organisms ? Machines: The Argument from Thermodynamics
- 2.1. Addressing potential objections to the argument
- 3. The Stream of Life: A Processual Conception of the Organism
- 4. Organisms as Streams: Three Lessons for Biological Ontology
- 4.1. First ontological lesson: 'Activity is a necessary condition for existence'
- 4.2. Second ontological lesson: 'Persistence is grounded in the continuous self-maintenance of form'
- 4.3. Third ontological lesson: 'Order does not entail design'
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 8: Objectcy and Agency: Towards a Methodological Vitalism
- 1. Introduction
- 2. An Ontological Surprise
- 3. Phases
- 4. Agential Dynamics
- 5. Object Theories and Agent Theories
- 5.1. Objectcy
- 5.2. Agency
- 6. Evolution and Agency
- 7. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 9: Symbiosis, Transient Biological Individuality, and Evolutionary Processes
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Beyond Replicators
- 3. Seeing the Light
- 4. Transient and Intermittent Individuals
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 10: From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological Individuals
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Some Implications of the Promiscuous Individualism Thesis Combined with a Hypercollaborative View of Life
- 3. A Process-Based Organizational Ontology for Biology
- 3.1. Simple self-maintenance
- 3.2. Minimal recursive self-maintenance and biological individuality
- 3.3. Recursive self-maintenance and the organismality of unicellular organizations
- 4. Collaboration and Multicellular Systems
- 4.1. A case of collaboration among single-species bacteria
- 4.2. A case of early eukaryotic collaboration
- 4.3. A case of eumetazoan collaboration
- 5. Revisiting the Implications of Promiscuous Individualism and an Excessively Collaborative View of Life
- 5.1. Organisms and other biological individuals
- 5.2. The individual and the organismal status of microbial communities
- 5.3. The distinction between life and non-life
- 6. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- PART IV: Development and Evolution
- 11: Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Process Biology
- 3. Process in the Developmental Systems Tradition
- 4. Core Ideas in DST: Epigenesis and Developmental Dynamics
- 4.1. Epigenesis
- 4.2. Developmental dynamics
- 5. An Ontology for DST: Genomes, Epigenomes, and Developmental Niches
- 6. DST as a Process Theory of the Organism
- 7. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 12: Waddington's Processual Epigenetics and the Debate over Cryptic Variability
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Substance versus Process: Two Conflicting Ontologies for Biology
- 3. Waddington's Epigenetics in the Context of Dynamical Systems Theory
- 4. Development as the Homeorhetic Balance between Robustness and Plasticity
- 5. Evolutionary Implications: The Genetic Assimilation of Acquired Characters
- 6. Assessing Two Contemporary Models of the Canalization of Development
- 6.1. How the two models differ in their interpretation of cryptic variability
- 6.2. Do both models capture the homeorhetic nature of canalization?
- 7. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 13: Capturing Processes: The Interplay of Modelling Strategies and Conceptual Understanding in Developmental Biology
- 1. Introduction
- 2. In Vivo Imaging and the Four-Dimensional Conceptualization of Life
- 3. Resolution, Contextuality, and the Return of Organicism
- 4. Reconstructing and Explaining Developmental Processes
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 14: Intersecting Processes Are Necessary Explanantia for Evolutionary Biology, but Challenge Retrodiction
- 1. Introduction
- 2. An Increasingly Appreciated Issue: The Underdetermination of Phylogenetic Trees
- 3. Intersecting Processes Are Also Absent from Phylogenetic Networks
- 4. The Need to Investigate Reticulate Intersecting Processes in Evolutionary Studies
- 4.1. Explaining the evolution of translation with a hypercycle
- 4.2. Explaining the evolution of biological functions by network analyses
- 5. Processes, and Hence Explanantia, Evolve
- 6. Conclusions: Towards a Typology of Processes
- Acknowledgements
- References
- PART V: Implications and Applications
- 15: A Process Ontology for Macromolecular Biology
- 1. Introduction
- 2. The Ecological Model of the World
- 2.1. Ecosystems, machines, and the environment
- 2.2. Internal versus external relations
- 2.3. Substance versus process
- 3. Problems with the Ecological Model
- 4. Symbiosis and the Importance of Integrated Capacities
- 4.1. Termites and their capacity to survive and reproduce
- 4.2. Process and individuality
- 4.3. Distributed capacities
- 4.4. The ecology of powers
- 4.5. Component versus integrated capacities
- 4.6. Integrated capacities at all levels?
- 5. Proteins, Structure, and Capacities
- 5.1. From structure to power?
- 5.2. More than just collaboration
- 5.3. Towards a general process account for macromolecular biology
- 6. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 16: A Processual Perspective on Cancer
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Cancer as a Process
- 3. The Relational Ontology of Levels
- 4. Morphogenetic Fields
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 17: Measuring the World: Olfaction as a Process Model of Perception
- 1. Introduction: Why Things Stink
- 2. The Received View: The Input Determines the Perceptual Experience
- 3. The Neural Basis of Olfaction and the Idea of Forecasting in Perception
- 4. The Interactivity of Forecasting and Stimulus Input in Perception
- 5. Conclusions: Perception as a Measure of Changing Signal Ratios and Expectancy Effects
- Acknowledgements
- References
- 18: Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Elimination or Mystification: The Personal Identity Dilemma
- 3. The Thing-Ontological Roots of the Dilemma: Substances, Bundles, and the Disappearance of Change
- 4. A Way Out: Persons as Biological Processes
- 5. Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Index
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