Everything Flows

Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré

A radical new conception of biology and the metaphysics of the living world
Offers a new kind of process philosophy with a naturalistic grounding
The Introduction provides a state-of-the-art survey to orient readers new to the topic
An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence

Everything Flows

Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré

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 previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead's 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 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 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.

Everything Flows

Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré

Foreword, Johannes Jaeger
Part I: Introduction
1:A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology, John Dupré & Daniel J. Nicholson
Part II: Metaphysics
2:Processes and Precipitates, Peter Simons
3:Dispositionalism: A Dynamic Theory of Causation, Rani Lill Anjum & Stephen Mumford
4:Biological Processes: Criteria of Identity and Persistence, James DiFrisco
5:Genidentity and Biological Processes, Thomas Pradeu
6:Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology: Some Basic Notions of General Process Theory, Johanna Seibt
Part III: Organisms
7:Reconceptualizing the Organism: From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream, Daniel J. Nicholson
8:Objectcy and Agency: Towards a Methodological Vitalism, Denis Walsh
9:Symbiosis, Transient Biological Individuality, and Evolutionary Processes, Frédéric Bouchard
10:From Organizations of Processes to Organisms and Other Biological Individuals, Argyris Arnellos
Part IV: Development and Evolution
11:Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory, Paul Griffiths & Karola Stotz
12:Waddington's Processual Epigenetics and the Debate over Cryptic Variability, Flavia Fabris
13:Capturing Processes: The Interplay of Modelling Strategies and Conceptual Understanding in Developmental Biology, Laura Nuño de la Rosa
14:Intersecting Processes are Necessary Explanantia for Evolutionary Biology, but Challenge Retrodiction, Eric Bapteste & Gemma Anderson
Part IV: Implications and Applications
15:A Process Ontology for Macromolecular Biology, Stephan Guttinger
16:A Processual Perspective on Cancer, Marta Bertolaso & John Dupré
17:Measuring the World: Olfaction as a Process Model of Perception, Ann-Sophie Barwich
18:Persons as Biological Processes: A Bio-Processual Way Out of the Personal Identity Dilemma, Anne Sophie Meincke

Everything Flows

Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré

Author Information

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson, Research Fellow, University of Exeter, and John Dupré, Professor of Philosophy of Science, University of Exeter

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 of biology, 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 of science 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 a former president of the British Society for Philosophy of Science, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Contributors:

Gemma Anderson, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Rani Lill Anjum, Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science, School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway

Argyris Arnellos, IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain

Eric Bapteste, Institute of Biology Paris-Seine, Sorbonne University, Paris, France

Ann-Sophie Barwich, Center for Science and Society, Departments of the Biological Sciences and Philosophy, Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, USA

Marta Bertolaso, Institute of Philosophy of Scientific and Technological Practice, Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Rome, Italy

Frédéric Bouchard, Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada

John Dupré, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

James DiFrisco, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Klosterneuburg, Austria

Flavia Fabris, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Paul Griffiths, Department of Philosophy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

Stephan Guttinger, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Anne Sophie Meincke, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Stephen Mumford, Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, Durham, UK and Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science, School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway

Daniel J. Nicholson, Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Egenis), University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Laura Nuño de la Rosa, IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain

Thomas Pradeu, Immunology Unit, CNRS and University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

Johanna Seibt, Department of Philosophy and the History of Ideas, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Peter Simons, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Karola Stotz, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Denis M. Walsh, Department of Philosophy, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Everything Flows

Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology

Edited by Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré

Reviews and Awards

"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 Dupré's 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 Dupré's 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