Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Vorbestellungen	Frist	Barcode	Lageplan	Ausleihhinweis
Zweigstelle: Dauerleihe	Standorte: BI-10 76	Status: Entliehen	Vorbestellungen: 0	Frist: 10.09.2023	Barcode: 00262269	Lagepläne: Lageplan	Ausleihhinweis:

John Dupré explores recent revolutionary developments in biology and considers their relevance for our understanding of human nature and human society. Epigenetics and related areas of molecular biology have eroded the exceptional status of the gene and presented the genome as fully interactive with the rest of the cell. Developmental systems theory provides a space for a vision of evolution that takes full account of the fundamental importance of developmental processes. Dupré shows the importance of microbiology for a proper understanding of the living world, and reveals how it subverts such basic biological assumptions as the organisation of biological kinds on a branching tree of life, and the simple traditional conception of the biological organism.

 

These topics are considered in the context of a view of science as realistically grounded in the natural order, but at the same time as pluralistic and inextricably integrated within a social and normative context. The volume includes a section that recapitulates and expands some of the author's general views on science; a section addressing a range of topics in biology, including the significance of genomics, the nature of the organism and the current status of evolutionary theory; and a section exploring some implications of contemporary biology for humans, for example on the reality or unreality of human races, and the plasticity of human nature.

TOC:

Introduction

I. Science

1: The Miracle of Monism

2: What's the Fuss about Social Constructivism?

3: The Inseparability of Science and Values

II. Biology

4: The Constituents of Life 1: Species, Microbes and Genes

5: The Constituents of Life 2: Organisms and Systems

6: Understanding Contemporary Genomics

7: The Polygenomic Organism

8: It is not Possible to Reduce Biological Explanations to Explanations in Chemistry and/or Physics

9: Postgenomic Darwinism

III. Microbes

10: (with Maureen O'Malley): Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

11: (with Maureen O'Malley): Metagenomics and Biological Ontology

12: (with Maureen O'Malley): Varieties of living things: Life at the intersection of lineage and metabolism

13: Emerging Sciences and New Conceptions of Disease: Or, Beyond the Monogenomic Differentiated Cell Lineage

IV. Humans

14: Against Maladaptationism: or What's Wrong with Evolutionary Psychology

15: What Genes Are, and Why There Are No Genes for Race

16: Causality and Human Nature in the Social Sciences