A tribute to Prof. Angelo Miele by Prof. David Hull

2017 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 177-179
Author(s):  
D. Hull
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Thomas Pradeu

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view (first proposed by Kurt Lewin and later elaborated by Hans Reichenbach) can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa.





Isis ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-417
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse


Author(s):  
Kim Sterelny

David Hull famously argued that the very idea of human nature was pre-Darwinian; once we genuinely embrace Darwin’s insights into unbounded variation and plasticity over time, no robust account of human nature can survive. There have been a variety of responses to Hull’s critique, variously showing that some concept of human nature can be rebuilt in ways consistent with contemporary evolutionary biology. In this chapter, I argue that, in one sense, some of these reconstructive attempts succeed. One can develop a concept of human nature consistent with evolutionary insights into variation and potentially unbounded change. But in a deeper sense these reconstructive projects are in trouble: the cost of making a concept of human nature evolutionarily credible is, arguably, to rob that concept of explanatory salience.









2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 571-572
Author(s):  
Angel E. Alsina ◽  
John McNab
Keyword(s):  




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