the riddle of organismal agency: new historical and philosophical reflections

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.

Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. He obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum and was a Writing-Up Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research. His research concentrates on the history and philosophy of biology, with a specific emphasis on how organism-environment interactions are construed in evolutionary biology and ecology.

Jan Baedke is Professor at the Department of Philosophy I, Ruhr University Bochum. His research is characterized by an integrated approach to the history and philosophy of the life sciences, with a focus on evolutionary biology and microbiology. He is author of Above the Gene, Beyond Biology: Toward a Philosophy of Epigenetics (2018) and PI of the German Research Foundation-funded research group ＂ROTO＂ (The Return of the Organism in the Bio-sciences: Theoretical, Historical, and Social Dimensions).

Guido I. Prieto is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Individualization in Changing Environments research association (InChangE), Faculty of Biology, Bielefeld University. A biologist by training and self-taught scientific illustrator, he obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum. His research focuses on the philosophical elucidation of the concepts of ’organism’ and ’biological individual’ and their roles within and outside biology. He is also interested in the philosophy and practice of visual representations in the sciences.

Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. His books include Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023), The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language (2007), and, as co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (2003; 2nd edition 2009). He has served as President of the British Society for the History of Science and the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology.