scholarly journals A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dupré ◽  
Daniel J. Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Living World ◽  
Metabolic Turnover ◽  
Substance Ontology ◽  
Evolution And Medicine ◽  
Philosophical Progress

This chapter argues that scientific and philosophical progress in our understanding of the living world requires that we abandon a metaphysics of things in favour of one centred on processes. We identify three main empirical motivations for adopting a process ontology in biology: metabolic turnover, life cycles, and ecological interdependence. We show how taking a processual stance in the philosophy of biology enables us to ground existing critiques of essentialism, reductionism, and mechanicism, all of which have traditionally been associated with substance ontology. We illustrate the consequences of embracing an ontology of processes in biology by considering some of its implications for physiology, genetics, evolution, and medicine. And we attempt to locate the subsequent chapters of the book in relation to the position we defend.

scholarly journals Substances, Agents and Processes

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Helen Steward
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Compelling Reason ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Oxford University Press

AbstractThis paper defends a substance-based metaphysics for organisms against three arguments for thinking that we should replace a substantial understanding of living things with a processual one, which are offered by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré in their edited collection, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Dupré and Nicholson consider three main empirical motivations for the adoption of a process ontology in biology. These motivations are alleged to stem from facts concerning (i) metabolism; (ii) the life cycles of organisms; and (iii) ecological interdependence. The paper discusses each of the three arguments in turn and concludes that none gives us any compelling reason to abandon the metaphysics of things. At best, they are arguments against a kind of caricature substance metaphysics that ought never to have been in the running in any case. Then, at the end of the paper, it is suggested that there may be more positive arguments for insisting on retaining things in our metaphysics, arguments which, perhaps ironically (given the opposed standpoint of Everything Flows) get their main impetus from the phenomenon of life.

scholarly journals Everything Flows

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Living World ◽  
Naturalistic Approach ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Biological Domain ◽  
Process Perspective

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not ontologically made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organized as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be looked for in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritize processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability—or, more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This multicontributor volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems such as identity, persistence, and individuality.

Life as Process

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-113
Author(s):  
John Dupré ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Life Sciences ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Living World ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The World

The thesis of this paper is that our understanding of life, as reflected in the biological and medical sciences but also in our everyday transactions, has been hampered by an inappropriate metaphysics. The metaphysics that has dominated Western philosophy, and that currently shapes most understanding of life and the life sciences, sees the world as composed of things and their properties. While these things appear to undergo all kinds of changes, it has often been supposed that this amounts to no more than a change in the spatial relations of their unchanging parts.From antiquity, however, there has been a rival to this view, the process ontology, associated in antiquity with the fragmentary surviving writings of Heraclitus. In the last century it has been especially associated with the work of the British metaphysician and logician, Alfred North Whitehead. For process ontology, what most fundamentally exists is change, or process. What we are tempted to think of as constant things are in reality merely temporary stabilities in this constant flux of change, eddies in the flux of process.My main claim in this paper will be that a metaphysics of this latter kind is the only kind adequate to making sense of the living world. After explaining in more detail, the differences between these ontological views, I shall illustrate the advantages of a process ontology with reference to the category of organism. Finally I shall explore some further implications of a process ontology for biology and for philosophy.

scholarly journals Ontology-based approach to reuse of business process knowledge

2008 ◽  
Vol 42 (43) ◽  
pp. 168-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatas Čiukšys ◽  
Albertas Čaplinskas
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Business Processes ◽  
Knowledge Engineering ◽  
Main Idea ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Application Domain ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Process Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Based

The paper proposes an approach to reuse of business process knowledge based on domain engineering, knowledge engineering and ontology-based systems engineering. The main idea of the proposed approach is to separate business process ontology and application domain ontology, and reuse the process ontology in different application domains. A notion of generic business process is introduced and is defined as a family of similar business processes. The two life cycles activity oflocation of generic business process in application domain is discussed.Ontologijomis grindžiamas verslo procesų žinių pakartotinio naudojimo metodasDonatas Čiukšys, Albertas Čaplinskas SantraukaStraipsnyje pristatomas verslo procesų žinių pakartotinio naudojimo metodas, grindžiamas dalykinių sričių inžinerija, žinių inžinerija ir ontologijomis grindžiama sistemų inžinerija. Pagrindinė siūlomo metodo idėja yra atskirti verslo proceso ontologiją nuo dalykinės srities ontologijos ir pakartotinai panaudoti proceso ontologiją skirtingose dalykinėse srityse. Pasiūloma apibendrinto verslo proceso sąvoka, apibrėžiama kaip panašių verslo procesų šeima. Straipsnyje aptariama apibendrinto verslo proceso lokacija dalykinėje srityje, susidedanti iš dviejų gyvavimo ciklų. Pirmame cikle yra atliekama apibendrinto proceso inžinerija, antrame – konkretaus proceso inžinerija. Pastaroji susideda iš trijų žingsnių: proceso konfigūravimo, dalykinės sritiesesybių priskyrimo proceso vaidmenims ir valdymo srautų tarp proceso veiklų apibrėžimo.

scholarly journals Translating Time: Modelling the (Re)Processing of Emerging Meaning

2020 ◽  
Vol 06 (01) ◽  
pp. 109-131
Author(s):  
Kobus Marais
Keyword(s):  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Ancient Greek Philosophy ◽  
Substance Ontology ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Work Done

The choice between substance ontology and process ontology has been haunting our thinking since, at least, Ancient Greek philosophy. The assumption seems that things are the way they are and that one has to put work into changing them. Constancy or substance, in this view, is primary and change (or process) secondary. In translation studies, this plays out in the source text as the stable starting point that has to be transformed into a target text. Based on Peirce’s process semiotics and other process thinkers, I inverse the above argument, arguing that change or process is primary and constancy or substance secondary. Because the universe is subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is a process taking form rather than a form changing. Any text is a process that has been constrained materially to be relatively stable, but the stability is not original; it is the effect of semiotic work, translation. My interest is in the semiotic work done to constrain the semiotic process into some form of stability and how one can get to know or understand these constraints. Part of this paper explores some of the implications of process thinking for translation studies. However, this reversal of ground and figure also challenges the modeling of translation. If translation is a process, how do we model it in a static medium such as print? Therefore, I explore the affordances that new computational technology offers for translating static models into dynamic ones.

Ontological Tools for the Process Turn in Biology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Seibt
Keyword(s):  
Classification System ◽  
Philosophy Of Biology ◽  
Process Theory ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
General Process ◽  
Systematic Process ◽  
Dimensional Classification ◽  
The World ◽  
Generic Dynamics

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce an outline of general process theory (GPT), a non-Whiteheadian systematic process ontology, and to provide some pointers on how this framework could be applied in philosophy of biology to clarify questions of individuality, composition, and emergence. GPT is a mono-categorial framework based on the new category of more or less generic (non-particular) dynamic individuals called ‘general processes’ or ‘dynamics’. According to GPT, the world is the interaction of (more or less generic) dynamics. The chapter sets out some elements of a non-standard mereology (with non-transitive part relations) on processes and introduces the five-dimensional classification system of GPT. It is shown how the theoretical predicates of homeomereity and automereity can be used to distinguish between developments and ‘non-developmental’ or ‘dynamically stable’ temporally unbounded activities that persist in time by literal recurrence.

scholarly journals Shedding Our Substantial Baggage: Towards a Process-Ontological Turn in Cognitive Science

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Benjamin Falandays
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Process Ontology ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
Fundamental Level ◽  
Core Set ◽  
The Family ◽  
Replication Crisis ◽  
Substance Ontology ◽  
Ontological Turn

In the fallout of the replication crisis, several authors have pointed to an underlying "theory crisis" in the cognitive sciences, which are argued to lack a core set of shared principles, assumptions, and methodologies. In this essay, I contend that one major barrier to an integrated field stems from a widespread, often implicit ontological commitment among scientists to substance ontology: the metaphysical view that reality is composed of one or more fundamental, static, independent entities. I argue that this metaphysical assumption contributes to the impression that alternative theoretical decompositions of systems are logically incompatible. I consider cognitive, cultural, and historical reasons for the little-challenged dominance of substance thinking in scientific thought, but suggest that the philosophical foundations are shaky. As such, the field may benefit from engaging more deeply with alternative metaphysical traditions that can be grouped as "process ontologies": the family of views that tend to deny the idea of a fundamental level, take existence to be inherently relational, and emphasize that nature is inherently dynamic. I offer a brief survey of Western philosophical traditions that speak to one or more aspects of process thought, but shine a spotlight in particular on useful concepts from Buddhist and Daoist philosophical traditions. I consider three necessary aspects of all living systems that cannot be accounted for within substance ontology, but can by process: (1) fuzzy boundaries, (2) causal loops, and (3) change. I conclude by suggesting that process ontology may help the field of cognitive science progress by dissolving ill-founded debates regarding the fundamental level of analysis, opening a path for a rigorous meta-theory of cognition.

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