Integrative Approaches to Exposome Research: Epistemological and Practical Issues 

Seminar Theme: “The Limits of the Drive for Integration”

The Exposome: Epistemological Challenges of Integration in Environmental Health

The exposome promises to complement the genome and broaden our understanding of the etiology of diseases. The stated goal is to adopt a comprehensive and integrative perspective on all environmental exposures, thereby moving beyond the gene-centric approach and the “exposure-by-exposure” study, both of which have proven to have their limitations. However, the promises of greater precision in measuring exposures through omics technologies, as well as greater integration of the data, methods, and disciplines involved, warrant scrutiny from an epistemological perspective. At the intersection of the philosophy of science, epistemology, and health geography, this presentation proposes to examine the challenges of integration—which aims to go beyond interdisciplinarity—within the exposome and the issues associated with the articulation of often fragile knowledge in environmental health.

E. Giroux, F. Merlin, and Y. Fayet have co-edited a book analyzing the development of integrative approaches in the field of environmental health studies:*Integrative Approaches in Environmental Health and Exposome Research: Epistemological and Practical Issues*(Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023)

Yohan Fayet is a geographer specializing in health issues, an Assistant Professor at the University of Clermont Auvergne, and a researcher at the UMR Territoires. By analyzing socio-spatial health inequalities and the measures that can reduce them, his research helps shed light on the spatial justice issues associated with the development of innovations in a context of transition. He has notably published a geographic classification at the municipal level to analyze these inequalities in metropolitan France (Beyond the map: Evidencing the spatial dimension of health inequalities. International Journal of Health Geographics, 2020).

Francesca Merlin holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2019) and serves as a research director at the CNRS and director of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IHPST UMR 8590). Her research focuses on central concepts in biology such as chance and probability, heredity and epigenetics, and particularly on their application within evolutionary theory. More recently, her work has centered on the plurality of conceptions of the environment in the biomedical sciences and the social sciences that study environmentally induced diseases. Since 2018, she has served as President of the Society for the Philosophy of Science (SPS). In 2019, she received the CNRS Bronze Medal. She published the book *Mutations and Contingencies: Chance in Evolutionary Theory* with Hermann Publishers in 2013. She also co-edited, with Thierry Hoquet, Précis de philosophie de la biologie, published by Vuibert in 2014.More information.

Elodie Giroux is a professor of the philosophy of science and medicine at Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University and a researcher at the Lyon Institute for Philosophical Research (IRPhil). Her work falls within the field of the philosophy of medicine and public health, with a focus on the philosophy of epidemiology. The overarching theme of her work concerns the relationships and tensions between the individual and population levels in the construction of health knowledge and practices. Her main publications have focused on the epistemology and history of modern epidemiology, the definition of health and disease (notably the book *Après Canguilhem, définir la santé et la maladie*, P.U.F., 2010), precision medicine, and more recently environmental health and the exposome. In addition to numerous articles (available onAcademiaor HAL) and the editing of special journal issues on these topics, his latest book, co-edited with C. Gauld and S. Demazeux, is *Promises and Limits of Precision Psychiatry* (Hermann, 2023).