Books
Fábregas-Tejeda A, Ramsey G. (under contract). Niche Construction and Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge University Press.
In recent decades, niche construction theory has been a widely debated subject in evolutionary biology and the philosophy of biology. Niche construction is the process by which organisms change their environment—or their relationship with their environment—in ways that affect the evolutionary trajectory of their population. Traditionally, these evolutionary trajectory changes are understood to be triggered by changes in selection pressures. In this Element, however, we contend that the received view of niche construction is incomplete. We argue that altering selection pressures is not the only way organisms can influence their population’s evolutionary future. Through their niche constructing activities, organisms can also change drift probabilities and channel developmental trajectories, consequently altering patterns of phenotypic evolution. We maintain that these evolutionary outcomes should also count as bona fide niche construction, as they stem from the same kind of activities that modify the organism-environment relationship—or either of its relata—in cases where selection pressures are altered. This integrated appraisal paves the way for understanding how niche construction can affect both adaptive and non-adaptive evolution, acts as a unique modulator of other evolutionary causes, and, more generally, how it fits into the causal structure of evolutionary theory.
Fábregas-Tejeda A. (forthcoming). The Organism-Environment Pairing: A Historical and Philosophical Re-Appraisal. MIT Press.
The organism-environment pairing plays a prominent role in the way different biological theories and models are structured, and scientific practices are carried out. However, understanding how this relationship has been construed and on which epistemic and ontological pillars it stands on remains an open problem that has not been sufficiently investigated by historians and philosophers of science. Against this background, this monograph offers a systematic, comprehensive re-appraisal of the organism-environment pairing in biology from the standpoint of integrated history and philosophy of science (&HPS).
The Organism-Environment Pairing: A Historical and Philosophical Re-Appraisal
CHAPTER 1. Organisms and Their Environing Worlds
1.1. Enter the Juxtaposition: An Organism and its Environment
1.2. Adopting an Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Approach to Explore the Organism-Environment Relationship
1.3. Overview of the Book: Guiding Axes and Content
CHAPTER 2. Grounding Biological Reasoning in Organisms and Environments
2.1. Excavating Organisms and Environments
2.2. From Inception to the Late Nineteenth Century: The Circuits of the Organism and Environment Concepts
2.3. The Organism-Environment Pairing: A General Framing Device for Early Twentieth-Century Biological Science
2.4. Introducing the Organicist Movement
CHAPTER 3. What Environs an Organism? Environment as Relatum
3.1. The ‘Environment’ of an Organism: What’s in a Name?
3.2. A Metaphysical Primer of Organismal Environments
3.3. Towards an Epistemology of Organismal Environments: Environment as Abstraction, Environment as Device of Understanding
CHAPTER 4. Drawn, Erased, Re-Negotiated: Organism-Environment Separation in Past and Present Biology
4.1. The Unsettled Interface(s) Between Organism and Environment
4.2. Introducing Early Attempts of Single Boundary Seeking
4.3. The Outlooks of Past Boundary Skeptics
4.4. Re-Negotiating the Internal-External Distinction
4.5. Current Controversies on Organism-Environment Separation
4.6. Articulating the Standpoint of Shifting Boundaries Defenders
CHAPTER 5. Of Reciprocity or the Contested Symmetry of the Organism-Environment Relationship
5.1. Organism and Environment Are to Be Found on a Two-Way Street
5.2. Different Understandings of Organism-Environment Reciprocity: A Historical Survey
5.3. The Rise and Fall of Organism-Environment Reciprocity in Post-War Biology
5.4. Organism-Environment Reciprocity in Contemporary Debates
5.5. Adjudicating Between Reciprocal Causation and Ontological Co-Constitution
CHAPTER 6. Breaking the Symmetry: Organismal Agency and Intrinsic Purposiveness
6.1. Organisms as Agents? A Historiographic View
6.2. Charting Contrasting Stances on Organismal Purposiveness and Agency in Early Twentieth-Century Biology
6.3. Foregrounding the Environment in Former Positions on Organismal Purposiveness
6.4. The Winding Road of Organismal Agency in Biological Research
6.5. The Present-Day Debate on Organismal Agency
6.6. Symmetry Broken in the Organism-Environment Relationship: Agency and Normativity
CHAPTER 7. The Organism-Environment Relationship Redux
7.1. Reconsidering the History and Historiography of a Central Dyad in Biological Science
7.2. The Organism-Environment Relationship: Philosophical Conclusions
“We publish so as not to spend our lives correcting drafts.”
— Alfonso Reyes in conversation with Jorge Luis Borges.