Writing in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science blog Auxiliary Hypotheses, widely published University of Exeter philosopher John Dupré recently announced a project entitled A Process Ontology for Contemporary Biology (PROBIO).
According to Dupré, who is director of Egenis, the Center for the Study of the Life Sciences (formerly the ESRC Center for Genomics and Society), the project aims to “redress the balance” between substance based and processual views within the philosophy of science. Giving the example of the cellular structure of the human body — where 90% of a body’s cells are microbial symbionts — Dupré notes that
“In general, it seems increasingly plausible that there is no unique way of distinguishing biological things from the multiple processes by which they are sustained, which supports the hypothesis that the ontology of biological things is less fundamental than that of living processes.”
The article then provides a series of examples that illustrate the relevance of a processual ontology for understanding contemporary biological dilemmas. These include the nature of the genome (“it is now clear that the genome is … an entity in constant flux”) and the distinction between structure and function in plant development and in protein molecules.
The article can be read here.
thanks for this, here he is with Alex Rosenberg