Why we die: Philippe Huneman: Death: perspectives from the philosophy of biology. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023, 542 pp, $109.99 HB.

Philippe Huneman's book, "Death: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Biology," explores the development and evolution of the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology in relation to death. Huneman identifies three approaches to addressing death: providentialism, the modern synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics, and explanatory pluralism. He argues that early evolutionary biologists subscribed to a form of providentialism, which posited that death is justified because it benefits the species or its descendants. However, this view has been debunked over time. Huneman also discusses the work of Marie-François Xavier Bichat and his influence on the field of physiology, as well as the explanations for death provided by evolutionary biologists, such as the antagonistic pleiotropy theory, the mutation accumulation theory, and the disposable soma theory. He concludes by advocating for explanatory pluralism, which acknowledges that not all aspects of death can be explained by a single theory. [Extracted from the article]