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The phosphorescence of the sea has aroused much questioning since antiquity and numerous studies address the topic in the 19th century, when this phenomenon (today referred to as bioluminescence) is given a biological explanation. Raising admiration, wonder, but also scientific controversy, the bright sea is a common motif, frequently reappearing in scientific travel writing, research studies in marine biology, popular science and literary texts. This paper examines the imaginary component which underlies these different texts and seems attached to the depiction of living light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the XXth century, Stéphane Leduc (1853-1939), physician and biologist in Nantes (France), believed that he created a new discipline: the synthetic biology. Using his own works on diffusion and osmotic growths, he considered that the structures obtained by him were very closed to living beings. In 1907, his conclusions were strongly criticized and his papers were refused by the Académie des Sciences de Paris, because they questioned spontaneous generations. This paper relates Leduc's experimental works and conclusions and as well analyses his analogical method.

In this paper, I try to demonstrate how critical empiricism and philosophical reasoning intertwine with each other and affected the development of medicine. It is a case study considering the problems of generation and semen in the writings of Aristotle and Galen via relationship between such concepts as matter, form, movement, change, causes and some others. The main question addressed in the paper is the reason of Galen’s return to Hippocratic paradigm of two-semina (male and female). I argue that the reason is two-fold: 1) Different philosophical reasoning and erroneous understanding of some aspects of Aristotle’s embryological model by Galen. 2) Empirical discoveries, which proved to be wrong. I demonstrate that Galen’s understanding of form/matter relationship, and his view on matter as an underling principle conditioned his understanding of the notion of physical change, that allowed him to speak about conception only as quantitative mixture between equal substrata. Finally, I show that Galen’s view on teleology and his limited understanding of formal/final vs efficient causes and their relationship forced him to claim the inadequacy of Aristotle’s biology and necessitated Galen to introduce emendations in definitions of seminal faculties of genders and reproductive fluids.

Copyright of Études Rurales is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The goal of this paper is to give several answers to the fundamental question Who is the other? In other words, it seeks to explain what I mean when I say "the other". The method consists in shifting the question outwards and inwards in relation to the philosophical tradition, science and poetry. It entails adopting a bird's eye view on a broad thematic which demands various inter- and pluri-disciplinary perspectives. The logical structure is the historical breakthrough in which, at every step, new answers are given to the primary question, like in Ravel's Bolero, or in a mantra, making possible both a historical and a circular advancement. In the third part I express a proposal from my own philosophical perspective, in relation with geometry, quantum physics and art. I conclude with the design of a possible emergency exit for the present situation of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an interdisciplinary analysis associating sociology and biology, this paper studies the social discourses and practices concerning mosquitoes and mosquito pest management in France. The qualitative and quantitative sociological field studies involved two areas, the Rhone river delta and the French alpine valleys. Recalling the anthropocentric heritage of our western societies, our paper shows an evolution, linked to recent social changes, towards more biocentric references, a fact that is noticeable in discourses and attitudes toward mosquitoes. Rather than a radical switch, processes of cohabitation and hybridizing may be observed, combining popular and scientific knowledge, environmental, medical and social issues. The first part of this paper highlights the social and biological relationships between the insect and its habitat, i.e., wetlands. The second part focuses on the forms of articulation between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, especially through the dualism pest/useful insect. The third and last part analyses how the "taxonomic arrangements" between anthropocentrism and biocentrism have triggered an evolution of French public policies regarding mosquito pest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Originating from nineteenth century physics, the concept of entropy—a measure of disorder, randomness, and/or the dissipation of useful energy—underlay a cosmology where order and complexity were seen as highly improbable phenomena in a universe tending toward chaos and disorganisation. Nearly a century later, theoretical frameworks were developed for understanding the production of entropy as an enabling feature of self-organized complexity in the natural world. These ideas would contribute to establishing connections between the origins, development, and evolution of life and the principles of a thermodynamic universe. For some, they also supplied the conceptual foundations for theorizing about a universal natural tendency driving the development of increasingly complex and ordered systems which amplify processes of entropy production and energy dissipation and dispersal. In this paper I chart a path through the aforementioned ideas and present their relevance in framing a relationship between our technological civilization and the Earth system. I then speculate about the prospect of a technosphere whose constitution and activity are aligned with thermodynamic principles of dissipation and entropy-production, drawing on theoretical biology and recent developments in bioengineering to envision a paradigm where technology becomes living matter itself.

Ever since the beginnings of economic entomology in Canada, research in biological control has drawn substantial support from the Federal Department of Agriculture. Enjoying a stable institutional environment with the establishment of the Dominion Parasite Laboratory in Belleville, Ontario, in 1929, biological control has also occupied an important position on the research agenda of the Department until the late sixties. Support from the scientific authorities was nevertheless fraught with important paradoxes. For example, research laboratories in biological control were built at a time when North American economic entomologists relied almost exclusively on synthetic chemical compounds like DDT. For some historians of science, the autonomy of Canadian entomologists explains the growth of this research program in the aftermath of World War II. However, the autonomy of the scientific community is a notion that is taken for granted in these historical explanations. In this article, I will demonstrate the institutional dynamic underlying the autonomy of Canadian entomologists in pursuing a research agenda suited to their interests. I will pay close attention to the role of certain actors -- foreign entomological services and the forest and pulp and paper industries - in the rise of a Canadian expertise in biological control. As well, I will show how their interventions forced a reorganization of research on the biological control of insect pests in agriculture and in forestry, and how this reorganization eventually entailed the dismantling of the Belleville laboratory in 1972.

Immunology gained legitimacy when it became the science of the immune system, a definition that announced the existence of a previously unknown body function. The very concept of immune system goes beyond the biological, offering opportunities for a renewed dialogue between biological science and the human sciences. This paper discusses the manifold viewpoints regarding the immune system.

The theoretical strenghts of Charles Darwin’s argument in the Origin of Species In the last 160 years, evolutionary biology has witnessed a considerable expansion in its theoretical structure and the wealth of empirical evidence to its support. In this paper I analyse the evidence presented in The origin of species (1859), with the aim of arguing for some specific theses in the philosophy of science, namely: (1) that the employment of a diverse array of methods, as well as of (2) a diverse array of evidence provides the theory with scientific robustness; (3) that explanation and prediction are both important for the success of the theory; (4) that laws are not necessary to confer evolutionary biology the status of science; (5) that crucial experiments are not possible in this domain.

Résumé L’article engage une investigation historique sur l’origine de l’expression « biologie synthétique » dans le but d’en dégager les principales composantes philosophiques. Les résultats de cette analyse sont ensuite utilisés pour étendre l’examen au terme d’« homme synthétique ». On montre ainsi que les deux notions comportent l’affirmation d’une conviction philosophique commune qui peut se résumer de la façon suivante : « la biologie est de la technologie ». L’analyse de cette affirmation permet de distinguer nettement deux notions qui sont généralement confondues dans la littérature transhumaniste : celle d’homme synthétique et celle d’homme nouveau. Les conséquences de cette distinction cruciale sont discutées. In this paper, we propose an historical survey of the expression “synthetic biology” in order to identify its main philosophical components. The result of the analysis is then used to investigate the meaning of the notion of “synthetic man”. It is shown that both notions share a common philosophical background that can be summed up by the short but meaningful assertion: “biology is technology”. The analysis allows us to distinguish two notions that are often confused in transhumanist literature: the notion of synthetic man and the notion of renewed man. The consequences of this crucial distinction are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biology is the most extensive field in the Corpus Aristotelicum. In his fundamental work De anima, Aristotle tries to fix the borders of this life science. The term ψυχή has a twofold explanatory status. On the one hand, ψυχή is understood as a principle of all living beings. On the other hand, it is understood as a cause of the fact that all living beings are alive. The paper is divided into three sections. (1) The first part shows why Aristotle discusses these issues in a work entitled Περὶ ψυχῆς. Since Pythagoras and Heraclitus, ψυχή was understood as a life principle: Pythagoras believed that men, animals and plants share the same nature: they are all ἔμψυχα and they are homogenous qua ψυχή. (2) The second part of this article deals with Aristotle’s definition of the soul in DA II: ψυχή is the principle of all living things. This establishes (i) the external criteria to divide living and non-living beings and (ii) the internal criteria to divide living beings. (3) The third part of this paper is concerned with the methodological consequences of this definition: the life functions (δυνάμεις τῆς ψυχῆς) are the central explanandum in Aristotle’s biology. De anima II defines such various life-functions as nourishment, senseperception and locomotion. These capacities contour the main fields of the philosopher’s biological investigation. For Aristotle, the faculty of reproduction is a subtype of nourishment. Reproduction is the most important and most natural function of all living beings. Genetics is, therefore, the most important field in Aristotle’s biology.

Abstract: In this paper, we tried to show through some clinical examples that there is not on the one side the body, and on the other the psyche. The Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), because the field it covers, namely procreation, is a magnificent observatory of interactions between body and psyche, desire and inhibition, request and mental block, hatred and love… Assisted reproduction techniques are often indicative of links between these terms, and of what symbols are at stake in the couples concerned. It is interesting to see how these sophisticated techniques not only work as a solution to infertility problems – which are plural and diverse – but as a developer of human problems that we previously thought we would escape. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

For Plato, life was the mimesis of a cosmos considered as perfect. Hence his distinction between exact copies (eikones) and false copies (eidola, phantasmata). But Plato also proposed a theory of learning, of education (paideia) based on the idea of the metamorphosis, of the transformation of the images. Continuing this line, eighteenth century Europe already witnessed the emergence of new forms of knowledge contesting the Platonic theory of mimesis and of duplication. This paper presents the biological theory of exaptation, which completely invalidates the principle of exact, true copy of the original. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBS, Immuno-analyse & Biologie Specialisee is the property of Elsevier B.V. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Our paper discusses interdisciplinary approaches as opposed to increased disciplinary specialization and underlines their value in dealing with the major issues currently faced by biology and with the challenges posed by the analysis and interpretation of high-throughput experimental data. Yet researchers opting for interdisciplinary collaboration in their daily work encounter numerous difficulties. To stimulate the development of fruitful and long-term interdisciplinary collaborations, we have organized since 2002 a yearly Spring School for researchers on the small island of Berder (south Brittany). The School is supported by CNRS and Inra continuing education departments. We describe its specific features and the ways in which it meets participant expectations as regards training and scientific exchanges. This is ensured by securing a wide range of speakers, a balance between the different disciplines, synthetic pedagogical presentations and by reserving ample time for questions, debates, interactions and activities during an intensive week away from daily concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A systematic examination of the three major French periodicals which published the majority of paleontological papers in the first part of the 20th century shows that phylogenetic conjectures were rare, in contrast with other countries in the same period. The three journals are compared from the point of view of the number and the nature of the figures that represented phylogenies. The evolution of these figures is also considered. We show that the Annales de paléontologie shared the same attitude as the other journals: a general tendency towards increased methodological cautiousness is observed, with special regards to stratigraphic standards. The results of the inquiry are interpreted in the light of the professional structure of French palaeontology in the first half of the 20th Century. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Copyright of BMS: Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique (l'Association Internationale de Méthodologie Sociologique (AIMS)) is the property of l'Association Internationale de Methodologie Sociologique (AIMS) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: Do biologists need the concept of function? A philosophical perspective. Functional ascriptions are problematic from the point of scientific methodology: they seem to explain causes from their effects. Contemporary philosophers of science have proposed to solve this problem by showing that functional statements can be translated into ordinary causal statements with no loss of content. The paper examines the successive solutions proposed by Ernest Nagel (1961), the ‘etiological’ theories (Wright, 1973, and other versions of the etiological theory), and the ‘systemic theory’ (Cummins, 1975). These conceptions are examined in the perspective of both their coherence and their signification for practicing biologists. To cite this article: J. Gayon, C. R. Palevol 5 (2006) . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Historical Narratives in Scientific Research: the Case of Evolutionary Biology Evolutionary biology provides some hints to analyse the articulations and possible issues which arise from the integration between scientific practise and historical-philosophical reflection. Indeed, the study of organic change has been carried out by scientists poised to play on more than one table, becoming the major players in the dialogue among science, epistemology and history of science. In particular, during the XX century a number of biologists made the historical-epistemological reflection a work tool. This, however, poses a number of questions: which role do historical narratives play for the scientist? What drives his choices of authors and issues to tackle? Can we consider scientists’ historical narratives as rhetorical devices to legitimise their own scientific agenda? By framing such issues in the field of evolutionary biology, the present article aims at reconsidering the use of historical narratives in science. The paper will consist of three sections. In the first part, I will retrace the main steps of the debate on the role of history of science in scientific practise and education. In the second paragraph, I will examine how the classical historical narratives provided by twentieth-century biologists have come under considerable criticism over time. A third and last section will examine the interplay between the latest evolutionists’ narratives and the current approaches in the historiography of evolutionary biology.

Synthetic Biology and Renewal of the Ethics of the Research. From the Genome Editing to Organoids of the Brains In this paper I will address the philosophical and scientific impact brought up by “synthetic biology” from the beginning of embryogeny to the fabrication of organoids, to analyze how this paradigm shift impacts on our definition of what a good life is, or should be, in rehabilitation a dialog between sciences and philosophy.

Race, Subjection and Culture in William Edward Burghardt Du Bois Despite the fact that it is widely established that the concept of race doesn’t have a biological foundation, it is still discussed whether it might have a political and social meaning. A key elaboration of a possible non-biological use of this concept is the one of W. E. Du Bois, which we try to analyze in this paper. Thanks to recent theoretical formulation and reinterpretation of this author, we try to articulate Du Bois use of “race” following three axes (social ontology, subjection and subjectivation process). In conclusion we discuss a potential major critical issue in Du Bois’s argument.

Abstract: In this first part, we describe how the scientific method is organized according to a circular structure and generates paradigms, constraining the researches in sciences like a fly bottle limits the displacements of flies in the bottle. Then, we analyze the neuroscientific paradigm using the Weawer''s paper about the increase of complexity in sciences underlying an amazing paradox: Neurosciences appear funded on the paradigm of physics since they belong to biology. This paradox has significant epistemological consequences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the animal kingdom, competition and hierarchical arrangements relative to members of the same sex are extremely common, with males competing for the top “alpha male” position and females ranked below them. Despite the widespread occurrence of hierarchical self-organization among animals and humans, ethno+musicologists often shy away from phylogenetic inferences and borrowing resources from biology, psychology, and anthropology. Is this a reflection of scholarly bias or a sense of unease with interdisciplinary, indirect, and large-scale data? This paper explores some answers to this question and suggests interdisciplinary connections for both ethnomusicology and musicology through the examination of biological and cultural frameworks with respect to social dominance.

The phosphorescence of the sea has aroused much questioning since antiquity and numerous studies address the topic in the 19th century, when this phenomenon (today referred to as bioluminescence) is given a biological explanation. Raising admiration, wonder, but also scientific controversy, the bright sea is a common motif, frequently reappearing in scientific travel writing, research studies in marinebiology, popular science and literary texts. This paper examines the imaginary component which under-lies these different texts and seems attached to the depiction of living light.

Georges Canguilhem's Biophilosophy The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared «On n’interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires»: laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of “Life”. Certain influential French philosophers of science of the mid-century such as Georges Canguilhem would disagree, or at least seek to resist some of Jacob’s diagnosis. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry into the foundations of the life sciences (particularly medicine, physiology and the cluster of activities that were termed “biology” in the early 1800s). Canguilhem speaks of «defending vitalist biology» and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic (or at least, «la vie déconcerte la logique»). Is this history and philosophy of biology? Is it vitalism? It definitely is a different project from current philosophy of biology. One short-lived term for it was “biophilosophy”. In this paper I explore the content of this term as it relates to the above questions.

Educational techniques that improve student engagement have repeatedly been shown to improve performance at the class level at many institutions and in multiple disciplines. However, knowledge of engagement in individual activities in large first-year classes, where there may be several sub-populations of students in different programs reflecting varied interests, is limited. In this study, we examined two large, lecture-based, introductory first-year biology classes to determine whether there were any relationships between specific learning activities and student engagement and performance, both at the class level and as broken down by program of study. Surveys were used to quantify the level of student engagement through four activities: (a) student response systems (clickers), (b) in-class discussions and activities, (c) lab and seminar activities, and (d) interdisciplinary learning. Engagement scores were then compared to students’ final grades. Students in all majors who reported higher levels of participation in most activities studied also reported feeling more engaged overall and achieved higher grades than their less-engaged peers; however, students in non-biology majors demonstrated notably weaker relationships between their engagement and performance in biology courses, where such relationships existed at all. In this paper, we discuss the learning activities which are associated with the greatest performance increases in both biology and non-biology majors and suggest how these results may be used to inform instructional techniques to benefit all students, regardless of major, in future course offerings. Il a été maintes fois prouvé que les techniques éducationnelles qui favorisent la participation des étudiants améliorent également les résultats au niveau de la classe, dans de nombreux établissements et dans diverses disciplines. Toutefois, nous savons que la participation est en fait limitée dans les activités individuelles menées dans les très grandes classes de première année, où il peut y avoir plusieurs sous-populations d’étudiants inscrits dans divers programmes qui reflètent des intérêts variés. Dans cette étude, nous examinons deux grandes classes de première année d’introduction à la biologie enseignées par le biais de cours magistraux afin de déterminer s’il existe des rapports entre des activités d’apprentissage spécifiques et la participation et les résultats des étudiants, tant au niveau de la classe qu’au niveau ventilé du programme d’études. Des sondages ont été employés pour quantifier le degré de participation des étudiants par le biais de quatre activités : (a) des systèmes de réponses des étudiants (clickers), (b) des discussions et des activités en classe, (c) des activités en laboratoire et des séminaires, et (d) l’apprentissage interdisciplinaire. Les pointages de participation ont été ensuite comparés aux notes finales des étudiants. Les étudiants de tous les programmes de spécialisation qui ont affiché des degrés de participation plus élevés dans la majorité des activités étudiées ont également rapporté qu’ils sentaient qu’ils avaient été davantage actifs en participation, en général, et ils ont obtenu des notes plus élevées que leurs camarades qui avaient moins participé. Toutefois, les étudiants qui ne poursuivaient pas une spécialisation en biologie ont fait preuve de rapports considérablement moins forts entre leur participation et leurs résultats dans les cours de biologie, là où il y avait même de tels rapports. Dans cet article, nous discutons les activités d’apprentissage qui sont associées aux meilleures augmentations des résultats parmi les étudiants qui se spécialisent en biologie et ceux qui poursuivent d’autres spécialisations et nous suggérons la manière dont ces résultats peuvent servir à informer les techniques pédagogiques afin que celles-ci puissent bénéficier à tous les étudiants, quel que soit leur domaine de spécialisation, pour les cours de l’avenir.

In this paper, we shall discuss, theoretically, obstacles and explanatory register to understand how to build a problem in science, especially when using time in coupling geology and biology. We shall also explain time in its geologic and didactic approaches. We try to understand the incommensurability of time and its infinitesimal division when using it to demonstrate a relationship between biology and geology. In literature, time is divided into three types: deep, sagittal or cyclic. Which types of time is used by students and teachers? Educationally, we seek to answer these questions: which obstacles students and teachers are faced with when they use to a type of time? Do students and teachers work in the same explanatory register when they relate time to other concepts?

To the modern eye, Ulisse Aldrovandi’s work presents an evident discrepancy: it offers elements which have been interpreted as first steps in modern biology. Among them, the illustrations immediately draw attention, as they prove a new way of observing and describing nature, contrasting with the medieval symbolic approach of plants and animals. But some of the illustrations are obviously wrong, imaginary, or clumsy. Generally, modern history of sciences has rejected these as errors, arguing that their presence was due to the immaturity of a boring new science. This paper aims to present another way of considering the coexistence of contradictory elements in Aldrovandi’s scientific discourse: these elements must not be judged and classified from our modern point of view. They testify to the existence of a mainly different and polymorphic, but coherent representation of nature.

At the current rate of technological development, in a world where enormous amount of data are constantly created and in which the Internet is used as the primary means for information exchange, there exists a need for tools that help processing, analyzing and using that information. However, while the growth of information poses many opportunities for social and scientific advance, it has also highlighted the difficulties of extracting meaningful patterns from massive data. Ontologies have been claimed to play a major role in the processing of large-scale data, as they serve as universal models of knowledge representation, and are being studied as possible solutions to this. This paper presents a method for the automatic expansion of ontologies based on corpus and terminological data exploitation. The proposed “ontology enrichment method” (OEM) consists of a sequence of tasks aimed at classifying an input keyword automatically under its corresponding node within a target ontology. Results prove that the method can be successfully applied for the automatic classification of specialized units into a reference ontology.

This paper focuses on the important disputation about biomoral enhancement, the new frontier of human enhancement international debate. In the first part, it analyses the main issues of Unfit for the future, the 2012 book of Savulescu and Persson, which represents a very relevant step within this theme. In the second part, it considers some arguments against Persson and Savulescu’s thesis and their own replies. Finally, it develops some arguments to show the difficulties related to the idea that it is possible to clearly understand the nature of a moral enhancement and point out the hurdle to circumscribe the basic elements we have to intervene on in order to obtain a real improvement of human moral attitudes

This work investigates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s concept of chiasme and his philosophical link with the biology by Adolf Portmann. The paper invokes a different meaning of "profondeur" surfaces, according to the notion of self-presentation. Through the studies of Merleau-Ponty, Arendt and Portmann himself it emerges the possibility of overcaming the opposition between inside/outside and a new conception of inter-animal-ity.