This book argues that evolution arises from the activities of organisms as agents, not from the replication of genes.

The Riddle of Organismal Agency brings together historians, philosophers, and scientists for an interdisciplinary re-assessment of one of the long-standing problems in the scientific understanding of life. Marshalling insights from diverse sciences including physiology, comparative psychology, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology, the book provides an up-to-date survey of approaches to non-human organisms as agents, capable of performing activities serving their own goals such as surviving or reproducing, and whose doings in the world are thus to be explained teleologically. From an Integrated History and Philosophy of Science perspective, the book contributes to a better conceptual and theoretical understanding of organismal agency, advancing some suggestions on how to study it empirically and how to frame it in relation to wider scientific and philosophical traditions. It also provides new historical entry points for examining the deployment, trajectories, and challenges of agential views of organisms in the history of biology and philosophy. This book will be of interest to philosophers of biology; historians of science; biologists interested in analysing the active roles of organisms in development, ecological interactions, and evolution; philosophers and practitioners of the cognitive sciences; and philosophers and historians of philosophy working on purposiveness and teleology.

A more comprehensive version of evolutionary theory that focuses as much on the origin of biological form as on its diversification. The field of evolutionary biology arose from the desire to understand the origin and diversity of biological forms. In recent years, however, evolutionary genetics, with its focus on the modification and inheritance of presumed genetic programs, has all but overwhelmed other aspects of evolutionary biology. This has led to the neglect of the study of the generative origins of biological form. Drawing on work from developmental biology, paleontology, developmental and population genetics, cancer research, physics, and theoretical biology, this book explores the multiple factors responsible for the origination of biological form. It examines the essential problems of morphological evolution—why, for example, the basic body plans of nearly all metazoans arose within a relatively short time span, why similar morphological design motifs appear in phylogenetically independent lineages, and how new structural elements are added to the body plan of a given phylogenetic lineage. It also examines discordances between genetic and phenotypic change, the physical determinants of morphogenesis, and the role of epigenetic processes in evolution. The book discusses these and other topics within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology, a new research agenda that concerns the interaction of development and evolution in the generation of biological form. By placing epigenetic processes, rather than gene sequence and gene expression changes, at the center of morphological origination, this book points the way to a more comprehensive theory of evolution.

We are still looking for a satisfactory definition of what makes an individual being a human individual. The understanding of human beings in terms of organism does not seem to be satisfactory, because of its reductionistic flavor. It satisfies our need for autonomy and benefits our lives thanks to its medical applications, but it disappoints our needs for conscious and free, self-determination. For similar reasons, i.e. because of its anti-libertarian tone, an organicistic understanding of the relationship between individual and society has also been rejected, although no truly satisfactory alternative for harmonizing individual and social wellness has been put forth. Thus, a reassessment of the very concepts of individual and organism is needed. In this book, the authors present a specific line of thought which started with Leibniz' concept of monad in 17th century, continued through Kant and Hegel, and as a result reached the first Eastern country to attempt to assimilate, as well as confront, with Western philosophy and sciences, i.e. Japan. The line of thought we are tracing has gone on to become one the main voices in current debates in the philosophy of biology, as well as philosophical anthropology, and social philosophy. As a whole, the volume offers a both historical, and systematic account of one specific understanding of individuals and their environment, which tries to put together its natural embedding, as well as its dialectical nature. Such a historical, systematic map will also allow to better evaluate how life sciences impact our view of our individual lives, of human activities, of institutions, politics, and, finally, of humankind in general.

This book proposes a new way to think about evolution. The author carefully brings together evidence from diverse fields of science. In the process, he bridges the gaps between many different--and usually seen as conflicting--ideas to present one integrative theory named ONCE, which stands for Organic Nonoptimal Constrained Evolution. The author argues that evolution is mainly driven by the behavioral choices and persistence of organisms themselves, in a process in which Darwinian natural selection is mainly a secondary--but still crucial--evolutionary player. Within ONCE, evolution is therefore generally made of mistakes and mismatches and trial-and-error situations, and is not a process where organisms engage in an incessant, suffocating struggle in which they can't thrive if they are not optimally adapted to their habitats and the external environment. Therefore, this unifying view incorporates a more comprehensive view of the diversity and complexity of life by stressing that organisms are not merely passive evolutionary players under the rule of external factors. This insightful and well-reasoned argument is based on numerous fascinating case studies from a wide range of organisms, including bacteria, plants, insects and diverse examples from the evolution of our own species. The book has an appeal to researchers, students, teachers, and those with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, as well as to the broader public, as it brings life back into biology by emphasizing that organisms, including humans, are the key active players in evolution and thus in the future of life on this wonderful planet.

A unique exploration of teleonomy—also known as “evolved purposiveness”—as a major influence in evolution by a broad range of specialists in biology and the philosophy of science. The evolved purposiveness of living systems, termed “teleonomy” by chronobiologist Colin Pittendrigh, has been both a major outcome and causal factor in the history of life on Earth. Many theorists have appreciated this over the years, going back to Lamarck and even Darwin in the nineteenth century. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the complex, dynamic process of evolution was simplified into the one-way, bottom-up, single gene-centered paradigm widely known as the modern synthesis. In Evolution “On Purpose,” edited by Peter A. Corning, Stuart A. Kauffman, Denis Noble, James A. Shapiro, Richard I. Vane-Wright, and Addy Pross, some twenty theorists attempt to modify this reductive approach by exploring in depth the different ways in which living systems have themselves shaped the course of evolution. Evolution “On Purpose” puts forward a more inclusive theoretical synthesis that goes far beyond the underlying principles and assumptions of the modern synthesis to accommodate work since the 1950s in molecular genetics, developmental biology, epigenetic inheritance, genomics, multilevel selection, niche construction, physiology, behavior, biosemiotics, chemical reaction theory, and other fields. In the view of the authors, active biological processes are responsible for the direction and the rate of evolution. Essays in this collection grapple with topics from the two-way “read-write” genome to cognition and decision-making in plants to the niche-construction activities of many organisms to the self-making evolution of humankind. As this collection compellingly shows, and as bacterial geneticist James Shapiro emphasizes, “The capacity of living organisms to alter their own heredity is undeniable.”