HiPhiS Seminar: “When Biology Asks ‘Why?’”

Tuesday, June 13, 2017, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
, IAE, Robert Reix Lecture Hall, Building 29, Triolet Campus.
When Biology Asks “Why?”: From the History of the “Genetic Program” Metaphor to Evo-Devo.
Interuniversity Seminar on the History and Philosophy of Science, 2017 series: “Causes, Foundations, Origins.”
Lecture presented by Alexandre Peluffo, biologist and historian, Ph.D. candidate at the Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS, Paris Diderot University.

Abstract:

In biology, the question of “why?” became a scientific one thanks to Darwin’s work. Before that, it had long been the domain of teleology—the theological study of final causes, Aristotle’s fourth and ultimate cause. In the 1960s, biologist Ernst Mayr theorized this paradigm shift using the metaphor of the “genetic program” and the contrast between “how?”-type questions—which explore the functioning and decoding of this program—and “why?” -type questions — which seek to explain how the program is written through its variation and transmission across generations. At the same time, Jacques Monod and François Jacob, who had just discovered transcription, proposed the same metaphor and drew the same conclusions. I will revisit the history of this convergence, its significance for the question of causation in biology, and its connection to current research in Evo-Devo, a discipline that seeks to understand how and why morphological biodiversity has evolved.
(N.B. Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo, originally scheduled to speak on this date, had to postpone her visit for health reasons)
More information