Events

KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:

1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.

2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.

3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.

  • The presentation language is English.
  • If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.

Event Details

Matthew Slater
KLI Colloquia
Tissue and Organ Types Within and Across Species
Matthew SLATER (Bucknell University & KLI)
2017-05-04 16:30 - 2017-05-04 16:30
KLI
Organized by KLI

Topic description:
Biologists and medical researchers have well-developed physiological taxonomies for organisms that span quite broad swaths of multicellular life. Animals, for example, are generally thought to be built from four basic types of tissue: muscle, epithelial, connective, and nervous tissue; plants exhibit different but likewise highly-conserved tissue typology. These taxonomies are hierarchical; within these broad classes, many more varieties can be identified. Organs, in turn, are functional assemblages of these tissues and other structures. Tissues and organ systems are in many ways ideal test cases for philosophical theories of biological classification and natural kinds; for their physiological typographies are well-developed pieces of consensus science that play important inferential and explanatory roles in our understanding and control of the biological world. I will focus on their role in cross-species inference in medical research and make some suggestions concerning our general approach to biological kinds that such practice encourages.

 

Biographical note:
Matthew H. Slater is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University in the USA. He is the author of *Are Species Real?* (Palgrave, 2013), has co-edited a number of volumes on metaphysics and the philosophy of science (including, from MIT Press, *Carving Nature at its Joints* (2011), *The Environment: Science and Ethics* (2012), and from Oxford University Press *Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Science*). He has written widely on metaphysics, philosophy of biology, and social epistemology. His recent essay, “Natural Kindness” won the 2015 Karl Popper Prize from the British Society for the Philosophy of Science. He is currently working on two book projects: one focusing on biological classification at various levels of generality and another, co-authored with Matthew Barker, on the role that norms play in scientific classification in general.