Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology by Daniel J. Nichol

Description: Everything Flows by Daniel J. Nicholson, John Dupré Against the traditional view of the living world as fundamentally composed of enduring things, this book argues for the radical alternative is that it essentially consists of processes. Biology is the study of the processes that constitute living beings, and the things biologists study ultimately derive their existence from more basic processes. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Everything Flows explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been supposed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biologicaldomain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such asorganisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whiteheads panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm isfundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and itsuggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the prospects of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity,persistence, and individuality. Author Biography Daniel J. Nicholson is a research fellow currently based at Egenis, The Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter. Previously, he held appointments at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas in Tel Aviv, as well as at the Konrard Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research near Vienna. His work is characterized by an integrated and strongly interdisciplinary approach to the history and philosophy ofbiology, with a specific interest in the ontology of living systems and the adequacy of mechanistic explanations to make sense of them. He is also interested in general topics in the philosophy ofscience and in theoretical biology, broadly construed. John Dupré is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Egenis, The Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter. He has formerly held posts at Oxford, Birkbeck College, London, and Stanford, and visiting chairs at the University of Amsterdam and Cambridge. He has wide-ranging interests in the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of science generally, and naturalistic, empirically grounded metaphysics. He is aformer president of the British Society for Philosophy of Science, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Table of Contents Johannes Jaeger: ForewordPart I: Introduction1: John Dupré & Daniel J. Nicholson: A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of BiologyPart II: Metaphysics2: Peter Simons: Processes and Precipitates3: Rani Lill Anjum & Stephen Mumford: Dispositionalism: A Dynamic Theory of Causation4: James DiFrisco: Biological Processes: Criteria of Identity and Persistence5: Thomas Pradeu: Genidentity and Biological Processes6: Johanna Seibt: Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology: Some Basic Notions of General Process TheoryPart III: Organisms7: Daniel J. Nicholson: Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream8: Denis Walsh: Objectcy and Agency: Towards a Methodological Vitalism9: Frédéric Bouchard: Symbiosis, Transient Biological Individuality, and Evolutionary Processes10: Argyris Arnellos: From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological IndividualsPart IV: Development and Evolution11: Paul Griffiths & Karola Stotz: Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory12: Flavia Fabris: Waddingtons Processual Epigenetics and the Debate over Cryptic Variability13: Laura Nuño de la Rosa: Capturing Processes: The Interplay of Modelling Strategies and Conceptual Understanding in Developmental Biology14: Eric Bapteste & Gemma Anderson: Intersecting Processes are Necessary Explanantia for Evolutionary Biology, but Challenge RetrodictionPart IV: Implications and Applications15: Stephan Guttinger: A Process Ontology for Macromolecular Biology16: Marta Bertolaso & John Dupré: A Processual Perspective on Cancer17: Ann-Sophie Barwich: Measuring the World: Olfaction as a Process Model of Perception18: Anne Sophie Meincke: Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma Review Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology is an excellent example of the skillful sampling of an on-going approach in philosophy of science. The sampling quite obviously emerged from intensive live discussions among the authors and stands in sharp contrast to the haphazardly put together collections that seem to dominate the field these days. It is an insightful and surprisingly lively read. I especially warmly recommend it to those philosophers exposed chiefly to the standard topics and approaches in philosophy of biology and in philosophy of science more generally. * Slobodan Perovi, Metascience *I highly recommend this insightful and lively collection. * Slobodan Perovi, University of Belgrade, Metascience *This is an important book in the development of biological explanation and understanding ... Essential. * L. C. Archie, CHOICE *This anthology heralds a revolution in the philosophy of biology, arguing that the long-standing dominance of the mechanistic framework should finally come to an end. Ambitious and innovative, yet cogent and empirically grounded, Daniel J. Nicholson and John Duprés Everything Flows is a must read for anyone interested in understanding new directions in the investigation of the biological world. * Katherine Valde, Philosophy of Science *Everything Flows is an impressive collection and a worthwhile read for metaphysicians, philosophers of science, and biologists...Whether or not support for processualism will grow or dwindle remains to be seen; irrespective, the book stands as an absorbing study of a specific moment in analytic philosophy of biology, and a manifesto for a distinctive movement in that field * Adam Ferner, BJPS Review of Books *Nicholson and Duprés Everything Flows is an excellent, multiperspectival effort to raise awareness about the metaphysical assumptions and problems that underlie the dominant orientation in mainstream biology, namely, that of mechanistic neo-Darwinism with its substance outlook, and to display why the process-relational alternative is to be embraced instead. * Adam C. Scarfe, Process Studies *This book appears at a time when genocentric mechanism has been widely disseminated to the public even as cutting-edge biologists and philosophers have been pulling the rug out from under it ... One of the uses of this book for philosophers will be to counter the metaphysical enshrinement of a false, but widespread impression about genes ... It is true that Everything Flows assumes philosophical and biological literacy, but it is also true that it does a very good job teaching both. * David Depew, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences * Long Description This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Everything Flows explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been supposed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previousattempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whiteheads panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be foundin the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings togetherphilosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the prospects of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, suchas identity, persistence, and individuality. Review Quote "This is an important book in the development of biological explanation and understanding ... Essential." -- L. C. Archie, CHOICE Feature A radical new conception of biology and the metaphysics of the living worldOffers a new kind of process philosophy with a naturalistic groundingThe Introduction provides a state-of-the-art survey to orient readers new to the topicAn open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence Details ISBN0198779631 Publisher Oxford University Press Year 2018 ISBN-10 0198779631 ISBN-13 9780198779636 Format Hardcover Media Book Imprint Oxford University Press Subtitle Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology Place of Publication Oxford Country of Publication United Kingdom Edited by John Dupré Position Research Fellow DEWEY 570.1 Affiliation Research Fellow, University of Exeter Short Title Everything Flows Language English Publication Date 2018-06-14 UK Release Date 2018-06-14 AU Release Date 2018-06-14 NZ Release Date 2018-06-14 Author John Dupré Audience Professional & Vocational Pages 404 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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