Biological Individuality : Integrating Scientific, Philosophical, and Historical Perspectives / Lynn K. Nyhart, Scott Lidgard.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lidgard, Scott, editor.

Nyhart, Lynn K., editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biology--Philosophy.

Biology.

Variation (Biology).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (368 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Individuals are things that everybody knows-or thinks they do. Yet even scholars who practice or analyze the biological sciences often cannot agree on what an individual is and why. One reason for this disagreement is that the many important biological individuality concepts serve very different purposes-defining, classifying, or explaining living structure, function, interaction, persistence, or evolution. Indeed, as the contributors to Biological Individuality reveal, nature is too messy for simple definitions of this concept, organisms too quirky in the diverse ways they reproduce, function, and interact, and human ideas about individuality too fraught with philosophical and historical meaning. Bringing together biologists, historians, and philosophers, this book provides a multifaceted exploration of biological individuality that identifies leading and less familiar perceptions of individuality both past and present, what they are good for, and in what contexts. Biological practice and theory recognize individuals at myriad levels of organization, from genes to organisms to symbiotic systems. We depend on these notions of individuality to address theoretical questions about multilevel natural selection and Darwinian fitness; to illuminate empirical questions about development, function, and ecology; to ground philosophical questions about the nature of organisms and causation; and to probe historical and cultural circumstances that resonate with parallel questions about the nature of society. Charting an interdisciplinary research agenda that broadens the frameworks in which biological individuality is discussed, this book makes clear that in the realm of the individual, there is not and should not be a direct path from biological paradigms based on model organisms through to philosophical generalization and historical reification.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Working Together on Individuality / Nyhart, Lynn K. / Lidgard, Scott

1. The Work of Biological Individuality: Concepts and Contexts / Lidgard, Scott / Nyhart, Lynn K.

2. Cells, Colonies, and Clones: Individuality in the Volvocine Algae / Herron, Matthew D.

3. Individuality and the Control of Life Cycles / Sterner, Beckett

4. Discovering the Ties That Bind: Cell- Cell Communication and the Development of Cell Sociology / Reynolds, Andrew S.

5. Alternation of Generations and Individuality, 1851 / Nyhart, Lynn K. / Lidgard, Scott

6. Spencer's Evolutionary Entanglement: From Liminal Individuals to Implicit Collectivities / Gissis, Snait

7. Biological Individuality and Enkapsis: From Martin Heidenhain's Synthesiology to the Völkisch National Community / Rieppel, Olivier

8. Parasitology, Zoology, and Society in France, ca. 1880- 1920 / Osborne, Michael A.

9. Metabolism, Autonomy, and Individuality / Landecker, Hannah

10. Bodily Parts in the Structure- Function Dialectic / Brigandt, Ingo

Commentaries: Historical, Biological, and Philosophical Perspectives

11. Distrust That Particular Intuition: Resilient Essentialisms and Empirical Challenges in the History of Biological Individuality / Elwick, James

12. Biological Individuality: A Relational Reading / Gilbert, Scott F.

13. Philosophical Dimensions of Individuality / Love, Alan C. / Brigandt, Ingo

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

0-226-44645-X

OCLC:

987910734