The next session of the IAS Seminar will take place next Friday, 3rd of July at 1pm. Centro Carlos Santamaria, room 3 July at 13:00 in Room 4 of the Centro Carlos Santamaría. The talk will be hybrid, to participate remotely contact: alberto.monterde@ehu.eus

Our speakers will be Daniel S. Brooks (University of Wuppertal), who will present some of his recent work. Title and Abstract below.

Scale Ranges, the Variety of Matter’s Forms, and Levels of Organization as Local Maxima

Originally applied to preserve a materialist worldview that extended beyond the physicochemical, the notion of levels of organization is now one of the most recognizable ideas in biology. Although sometimes (and erroneously) used interchangeably, the relationship between “levels” and “scale” presents an exciting area of inquiry for theoretical biology and the history and philosophy of science. Here, I will explore how the two notions can inform and enhance one another. First, I link up the idea of levels of organization with the insight that putative levels (e.g., cells, tissue, and ecosystems) exhibit distributed clustering that extends across scale ranges rather than particular part-whole demarcations. Second, I argue that this “local maxima” approach suggests that levels should be seen as a spectrum, where attributing discrete identity (as a particular type of, cell, tissue, ecosystem) is distributed across distinct and moderately localized or regional resolutions in time and space.