Search Results (17)

Tertullian provocatively asked (circa 200 AD), “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” The relationship between formal philosophy and religion has been a contentious battleground ever since. It has historically come into sharpest focus in biology generally, and evolutionary theory specifically. Charles Darwin clearly won the day in the short-term. His evolutionary functionalism looked like an inglorious abandonment of time-honored metaphysical realism for positivist empirical reductionism with a concomitant horizontalization of perspective that has secularized and flattened the intellectual landscape. But more recently the rise of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) and epigenetic factors have forced a reevaluation of his archrival, Richard Owen. This paper argues that the key to understanding Owen is rooted in his devout Anglicanism through his broad church theology which put Plato into the service of evolutionary theory only now beginning to receive our belated attention. The road to Owen’s evolutionary theory weaved its way from Athens through Jerusalem, finding itself in the contentious intersection of 19th-century Victorian science and religion. Inaccurately mapped by William Paley, Owen’s evolutionary structuralism offered an alternative through science, philosophy, and religion that is only now beginning to be appreciated. Full article

With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rise of new forms of productive forces, the ways humans interact with space, objects, and information are being profoundly reshaped, bringing unprecedented possibilities for upgrading interactive spaces—human settlements that integrate physical and digital environments. Against this background, using the literature on interactive space research from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection between 1990 and 2025 as the data source, this study employs CiteSpace software to generate scientific knowledge maps, analyzing the historic development, hotspots, and trends in the research of interactive space, providing both theoretical and data support. In terms of results, a total of 458 papers were collected, demonstrating a consistent year-on-year increase. The research spans multiple fields, including computer science, architecture, ecology, physics, design, and behavioristics. Specifically, results indicate that research hotspots in interactive spaces include collaborative governance, social coexistence, and sustainable renewal, all of which are highly relevant to activating human settlements. The vitality of interactive spaces can be constructed across multiple dimensions, (for instance, enhancement based on ecology, environment, culture, and other factors of the space). However, research on interactive spaces still suffers from a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration and multi-domain integration; therefore, it is essential to strengthen cooperation among relevant fields. Current research lacks interdisciplinary integration and dynamic response mechanisms. Based on these findings, this study, through visual analysis, reveals the research hotspots and evolutionary trajectory of interactive spaces and proposes a “technology–humanism–governance” trinity framework. This system should be based on technology as the means, humanism as the guiding principle, and effective governance as the goal. It aims to explore how to leverage the service-oriented and convenient nature of technology in interactive spaces to deepen human-centric design and thereby drive the optimization of systems. Based on these findings, future research on interactive spaces should shift its design philosophy to be more human-centric, establish a multidisciplinary research system, utilize local empirical cases, and develop scalable, applicable theories to construct harmonious, open spaces, enhance human–environment relationships, and provide other countries undergoing urbanization with practical solutions. Full article

The Great Reset (GR) has been presented by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022 as a model through which a “stakeholder economy” would achieve “resilient, equitable, and sustainable” social, economic, and ecological reform. The GR agenda includes environmentally sustainable use and more equitable distribution of resources. This article raises the question of whether the Great Reset program should be interpreted as a “realistic utopia” and what its reform potential is. To this end, the GR program is tested against the current state of science and philosophy. The idea of a utopia is analyzed in the light of recent philosophical and scientific approaches, such as critical realism in philosophy, social systems theory in sociology, and complexity theory in science. A comparative conceptual analysis is carried out by introducing the idea of a realistic utopia in Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness. In the final discussion, some doubts are raised about the logical coherence, rigor of scientific theorizing, policy prescriptions, and predictive potential of the Great Reset. It is concluded that utopian projects of radical reform are not realistic due to the supposed long-term repercussions of exogenous shocks or “black swan” events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, they must offer explanations of the deep structural elements and evolutionary patterns that underlie society and the economy, drawing from these explanations the policy implications, predictions, and prescriptions that can support change. Full article

The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most likely, the Last Universal Common Ancestor was subject to Darwinian evolution, but the question remains to what extent Darwinian evolution applies to the prebiotic and protocellular phases. In this review, we reflect on the current status of evolutionary theory in origins of life research by bringing together philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and empirical research in the origins field. We explore the various ways in which evolutionary theory has been extended beyond biology; we look at how these extensions apply to the prebiotic development of (proto)metabolism; and we investigate how the terminology from evolutionary theory is currently being employed in state-of-the-art origins of life research. In doing so, we identify some of the current obstacles to an evolutionary account of the origins of life, as well as open up new avenues of research. Full article

Between the Boxer Movement and the 1911 Revolution, missionaries in China confronted distinct social challenges compared to their counterparts in home countries. In response, American missionary Young John Allen and his Chinese assistant, Van Yi, co-translated James Wideman Lee’s The Making of a Man into Chinese as Ren Xue. This translation aimed to counter Spencer’s social evolutionism, introduced by native intellectuals like Yan Fu, offering a reinterpretation of the relationships among individuals, nations, and God. Additionally, it sought to remap philosophy, evolutionism, ethics, and religion tailored for late Qing China. In contrast to clergymen in America and China, Chinese native intellectuals developed their unique reinterpretations and reshaping of philosophy, science, evolutionism, ethics, and religion for China. Through a cross-comparison of works by Yan Fu, Huxley, Spencer, Lee and Allen, this study explored the diverse responses to Spencer’s evolutionary theory and related issues among the advocates of evolutionism, Chinese intellectuals, and clergies in America and China. Full article

In this paper, I give readers an idea of what some scholars are interested in, what I found interesting, and what may be of future interest in the philosophy of emotion. I begin with a brief overview of the general topics of interests in the philosophy of emotion. I then discuss what I believe to be some of the most interesting topics in the contemporary discourse, including questions about how philosophy can inform the science of emotion, responses to aspects of the mind–body problem, and concerns about perception, cognition, and emotion, along with questions about the place of 4E approaches and meta-semantic pluralist^e approaches in the embodied cognitive tradition. I also discuss the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion, the emerging field of cultural evolution, the import of a dual-inheritance theory in this emerging field, and I propose a possible way to integrate the frameworks of dual-inheritance theory and meta-semantic pluralism^e to demonstrate at least one way in which the philosophy of emotion can contribute to the emerging field of cultural evolution. I conclude with a brief summary of this paper and note at least one significant implication of my proposal for the natural kind–social construction debate in the philosophy of emotion. Full article

One of the most sophisticated philosophies of science is the methodology of scientific research programmes (MSRP), developed by Imre Lakatos. According to MSRP, scientists are working within so-called research programmes, consisting of a hard core of fixed convictions and a flexible protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses. Anomalies are accommodated by changes to the protective belt that do not affect the hard core. Under MSRP, research programmes are appraised as ‘progressive’ if they successfully predict novel facts but are judged as ‘degenerative’ if they merely offer ad hoc solutions to anomalies. This paper applies these criteria to the evolutionary research programme as it has performed during half a century of ERV research. It describes the early history of the field and the emergence of the endogenization-amplification theory on the origins of retroviral-like sequences. It then discusses various predictions and postdictions that were generated by the programme, regarding orthologous ERVs in different species, the presence of target site duplications and the divergence of long terminal repeats, and appraises how the programme has dealt with data that did not conform to initial expectations. It is concluded that the evolutionary research programme has been progressive with regard to the issues here examined. Full article

Many separate fields and practices nowadays consider microbes as part of their legitimate focus. Therefore, microbiome studies may act as unexpected unifying forces across very different disciplines. Here, we summarize how microbiomes appear as novel major biological players, offer new artistic frontiers, new uses from medicine to laws, and inspire novel ontologies. We identify several convergent emerging themes across ecosystem studies, microbial and evolutionary ecology, arts, medicine, forensic analyses, law and philosophy of science, as well as some outstanding issues raised by microbiome studies across these disciplines and practices. An ‘epistemic revolution induced by microbiome studies’ seems to be ongoing, characterized by four features: (i) an ecologization of pre-existing concepts within disciplines, (ii) a growing interest in systemic analyses of the investigated or represented phenomena and a greater focus on interactions as their root causes, (iii) the intent to use openly multi-scalar interaction networks as an explanatory framework to investigate phenomena to acknowledge the causal effects of microbiomes, (iv) a reconceptualization of the usual definitions of which individuals are worth considering as an explanans or as an explanandum by a given field, which result in a fifth strong trend, namely (v) a de-anthropocentrification of our perception of the world. Full article

The details of abiogenesis, to date, remain a matter of debate and constitute a key mystery in science and philosophy. The prevailing scientific hypothesis implies an evolutionary process of increasing complexity on Earth starting from (self-) replicating polymers. Defining the cut-off point where life begins is another moot point beyond the scope of this article. We will instead walk through the known evolutionary steps that led from these first exceptional polymers to the vast network of living biomatter that spans our world today, focusing in particular on perception, from simple biological feedback mechanisms to the complexity that allows for abstract thought. We will then project from the well-known to the unknown to gain a glimpse into what the universe aims to accomplish with living matter, just to find that if the universe had ever planned to be comprehended, evolution still has a long way to go. Full article

John Polkinghorne was, undoubtedly, one of the most influential authors in the dialogue between science and religion. His attitude is characterized by a focus on the concept of kenosis in response to the ontological orientation of process philosophy and theology. God’s omnipotence implies the possibility that God created the universe as an evolutionary and autonomous world, which is not predetermined but has been created for openness. According to Polkinghorne, the position of this openness may be in the uncertainty associated with the world of quantum and chaotic phenomena. God’s self-limitation of his own omnipotence can thus be understood as an effort to respect the autonomy of natural processes and human freedom. Such an image of God is compatible with the current state of scientific knowledge, which itself becomes the starting point for thinking about God and his relationship to the world. Thus, despite the problems of some parts of its concept, Polkinghorne creates a comprehensive integrative approach to the dialogue between science and religion. Full article

Recent and ongoing debates in biology and in the philosophy of biology reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the current definitions or circumscriptions, which are often vague or controversial, of key concepts such as the gene, individual, species, and homology, and even of whole disciplinary fields within the life sciences. To some extent, the long growing awareness of these conceptual issues and the contrasting views defended in their regard can be construed as a symptom of the need to revisit traditional unchallenged partitions between the specialist disciplines within the life sciences. I argue here that the current relationships between anchor disciplines (e.g., developmental biology, evolutionary biology, biology of reproduction) and nomadic concepts wandering between them is worth being explored from a reciprocal perspective, by selecting suitable anchor concepts around which disciplinary fields can flexibly move. Three examples are offered, focusing on generalized anchor concepts of generation (redefined in a way that suggests new perspectives on development and reproduction), organizational module (with a wide-ranging domain of application in comparative morphology, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology) and species as unit of representation of biological diversity (suggesting a taxonomic pluralism that must be managed with suitable adjustments of current nomenclature rules). Full article

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial (deep learning, robotics), natural sciences (neuroscience, cognitive science, biology), and philosophy (philosophy of computing, philosophy of mind, natural philosophy). The question is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its computational models such as info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach human-level intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. Full article

The grand challenges of our time—climate change, biodiversity losses, and global non-communicable disease rates—underscore that humanity and the planet are in crisis. Planetary health provides a unifying concept wherein efforts toward remediation and survival can be concentrated. Evidence derived from the animal kingdom and from human demography suggest that there is cause for optimism in planetary health. With proper navigation, a transition toward a new epoch—one of symbiotic flourishing—is possible. Responses to the current challenges can usher in a new reality, one in which the core value is the well-being of all. This paper presents the philosophies and perspectives of renown biophilosopher, Jonas Salk, who—after developing the first effective vaccine to prevent polio, one of the great achievements in public health—expanded his vision beyond the prevention of individual diseases to that of addressing the basic problems of humankind. This vision is very much in line with our current understanding of and approach to planetary health. In response to changing conditions, planetary limits, and evolutionary pressure, new values, new communities, and new modes of interacting will likely emerge and be integrated with developments in science, technology, economics, the arts, and international relations, resulting in our survival and enhanced health and well-being. Full article

A revitalized practice of natural philosophy can help people to live a better life and promote a flourishing ecosystem. Such a philosophy is natural in two senses. First, it is natural by seeking to understand the whole of nature, including mental phenomena. Thus, a comprehensive natural philosophy should address the phenomena of sentience by embracing first- and second-person methods of investigation. Moreover, to expand our understanding of the world, natural philosophy should embrace a full panoply of explanations, similar to Aristotle’s four causes. Second, such a philosophy is natural by being grounded in human nature, taking full account of human capacities and limitations. Future natural philosophers should also make use of all human capacities, including emotion and intuition, as well as reason and perception, to investigate nature. Finally, since the majority of our brain’s activities are unconscious, natural philosophy should explore the unconscious mind with the aim of deepening our relation with the rest of nature and of enhancing well-being. Full article

An important question facing contemporary philosophy of science is whether the natural sciences in terms of their historical records exhibit distinguishing developmental patterns or structures. At least two philosophical stances are possible in answering this question. The first pertains to the plurality of the individual sciences. From this stance, the various sciences are analyzed individually and compared with one another in order to derive potential commonalities, if any, among them. The second stance involves a general philosophy of science in which a thorough theory of the natural sciences is developed. The latter stance strives to account for more than possible commonalities among the sciences but also to provide a broad-spectrum philosophical framework to account for, or to explicate, the nature of science itself and its progress. In this paper, the second stance is taken in which an evolutionary philosophy of science is proposed. To that end, Thomas Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science is initially discussed and critiqued. An evolutionary philosophy of science is then proposed based on a revision of Kuhn’s evolutionary philosophy of science in terms of George Gaylord Simpson’s various tempos and modes for biological evolution. Next, two historical case studies from the biological sciences are reconstructed to illustrate the robustness of the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science for explicating the progress of the natural sciences. A concluding section discusses the proposed evolutionary philosophy of science with respect to providing a broad-spectrum framework or general philosophy of science for understanding the nature and progress of the natural sciences. Full article