D.J. Nicholson and R. Gawne on Organicism

For a few weeks, we will be reading and discussing ideas related to the philosophy of biology. We started this segment with D.J. Nicholson and R. Gawne's paper "Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but organicism: What the philosophy of biology was."

Our discussion began with questions: 

• Are the authors arguing for essentializing the idea of biology? Is the idea that biology is autonomous? Would such a claim involve disregarding the history of biology?
• Why is the organicism suggested by the authors committed to natural hierarchies? Are they some potential dangers involved in a hierarchical view of nature?
• What does count as inclusion in the philosophy of biology? What is the domain of this field and what are its disciplinary norms?
•  Is the organicist perspective caught in old frameworks and potentially outdated scientific assumptions? Does organicism pay enough attention to contemporary biology?
• What kind of history does the paper engage in? Is it a history of discourse, ideas or…?What does it tell us about the methodology of the paper?
• Can the history of philosophy of biology be mapped to the reception of Kant?
• Is organicism better equipped to deal with normative questions, in comparison to vitalism & logical empiricism? How is bioethics related or maybe intersecting with the philosophy of biology?
• What are the exact differences between organicism & vitalism? Aren't there ultimately intersections and similarities between the two?
• Autonomy of biology vs. biological exceptionalism? Is organicism successful in tying them apart, or do they remain indistinguishable?

We started the discussion by considering the relation between vitalism and organicism. Given that some vitalists like Bergson can be considered organicists in some ways, maybe the boundary between the two perspectives is not as clear as the paper argues. This would especially depend on our reading of Bergson, and how we understand his claim that living things can be grasped and understood through intuition only. Bergson does not deny the possibility of understanding living things, but such understanding does not happen in rational terms (i.e., through intellect and rationality, as Kantians would say). That being said, the dualism between rationality and intention might not matter as much in the contemporary philosophy of biology.

We considered the author’s mapping of the history of philosophy of biology and discussed the possibilities of writing this history in different ways. For example, it seems that the philosophy of biology can be traced back to Aristotle as well, if we define the field in a broader sense and do not link it to academic professionalism of the last century. The question remains what is at stake at these definitions and distinctions, and whether philosophy of Biology is a sociological subfield or a conceptual field/subdiscipline. 

We also considered different reasons why biology needs to be considered autonomous, and whether this thesis can be challenged in contemporary sciences. The idea of the autonomy of biology suggests that biology cannot be explained through physics and other disciplines. Biological mode of explanation is different and unique and should not be reduced to other modes of explanation. This suggests that life cannot be explained simply through evolutionary terms, a perspective that can be traced back to Aristotle.

Our discussion also considered some of the challenges to the organicist hierarchical view of nature posed by the work of some other scholars such as Evelin Fox Keller. Her work has rejected the validity of the natural hierarchy thesis and has shown that some organisms do not contain different levels of hierarchy within themselves. Additionally, we considered the relation between organicism and genetic biology, and how the organicist perspective overcomes some of the limitations of genetic determinism. Specifically, we discussed how genetic biology has difficulty explaining epigenetics and the contingency of the transformations in organisms. This can be one reason why the focus on the organism is important. Additionally, organicism sheds light on the dynamic relationship between the organism and its environment and enables an account of biological agency that can be important for our current understandings of biology.