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
Topic description:
In almost all domains of the life sciences, major historical debates are dominated by a division between internalists vs. externalists schools of thought (Gould 1977, Wilson 2004, 2005, Godfrey-Smith 1996, Bechtel and Richardson 1993/2010). Internalists and externalists have argued over nature (genetics) vs. nurture (culture), the content and vehicles of mental states, the causes of biological forms and function, the sources of adaptive evolution, the specification of immune self-recognition, the development of language, etc.
In this talk, I sketch out the basis of a future research proposal. The goal is to identify and characterize a general principle in biology and show how it can reconcile the internal vs. external dichotomy. The principle is that living systems, through their activities, explorations, and modes of interactions (“enabling causes”), tend to actively create the internal and external conditions that in turn enable “constitutive causes” to come together and give rise to biological form, function, and relative fitness.
The project will consist of two parts. First, I will focus on historical episodes in immunology and cancer biology, where internalist vs. externalist camps have argued over the ultimate cause of cellular identity. I will seek out “middle-ground” positions that have been sidelined or mischaracterized as merely interactive or purely internal/external, but in fact provide what I call “enabling causes” that defy the internal vs. external distinction. I then lay out how to test the generality of this “enabling” principle of biology and draw out its consequences for debates about biological identity.
Biographical note:
