Date and time: September 25, Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Gabriel Piedrafita, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK)

Title: Tissue-level cell-fate coordination underpins epithelial clone competition dynamics: theoretical modeling to open a conceptual discussion

Abstract: Epithelia are among the simplest mammalian tissues. Yet, little is known about how epithelial cells organize and orchestrate their fates (whether to divide, differentiate or die) to guarantee the turnover while preserving tissue homeostasis. Over a decade, theoretical models have been proposed according to which individual progenitor cell behavior would accommodate toautonomous, random fate choices, with remarkably good fits – at a statistical level – on lineage-tracing data from transgenic mice. It was my aim in this work to revisit these studies, and re-evaluate previous paradigms with an emphasis on bringing statistical-physics descriptions closer to the biological phenomenology at the cell level. By means of new experimental data and mathematical modeling, I will show how epithelial homeostasis can conform to simple rules where niche-sensing and collective cell-fate coordination play a predominant role. I would like to finish discussing how this domain of tissue-level communication would necessary constrain and impact on mutant clonal expansion, contributing to an internal control of tumourogenesis, letting the topic open for further debate.

IAS-Research Seminar by Miguel Aguilera: “Integrated information and autonomy in the thermodynamic limit”

Date and time: June 26, Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Miguel Aguilera (sci@maguilera.net)

Title: Integrated information and autonomy in the thermodynamic limit

Abstract: The concept of autonomy is fundamental for understanding biological organizationand the evolutionary transitions of living systems. Understanding how a system constitutes itself as an individual, cohesive, self-organized entity is a fundamental challenge for the understanding of life. However, it is generally a difficult task to determine whether the system or its environment has generated the correlations that allow an observer to trace the boundary of a living system as a coherent unit. Inspired by the framework of integrated information theory, we propose a measure of the level of integration of a system as the response of a system to partitions that introduce perturbations in the interaction between subsystems, without assuming the existence of a stationary distribution. With the goal of characterizing transitions in integrated information in the thermodynamic limit, we apply this measure to kinetic Ising models of infinite size using mean field techniques. Our findings suggest that, in order to preserve the integration of causal influences of a system as it grows in size, a living entity must be poised near critical points maximizing its sensitivity to perturbations in the interaction between subsystems. Moreover, we observe how such a measure is able to delimit an agent and its environment, being able to characterize simple instances of agent-environment asymmetries in which the agent has the ability to modulate its coupling with the environment.

Talk by Nathalie Gontier: Roots of reticulate evolutionary theories in natural philosophy

Date and time: May 15, Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Nathalie Gontier (Center for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon)

Title: Roots of reticulate evolutionary theories in natural philosophy

Abstract: 

Symbiosis, symbiogenesis, hybridization, virolution and infectious heredity are forms of reticulate evolution that are currently drawing the attention of philosophers of science because of the discussions they raise on the origin of life and the diversification of major cell types, the nature of biological individuality, and the limited scope of the traditional Modern Synthesis in defining and explaining all aspects of life’s evolution. Research on the innovative nature of reticulate evolution currently overshadows inquiries into the scientific and sociocultural context wherein these ideas first emerged. Hybridization theories were first formulated in relation to the ethnic mixing induced by colonialism and imperialism, with religious, political and scientific leaders speaking out against the mixing of ethnicities – an idea also endorsed by the eugenicist founders of the Modern Synthesis. Symbiosis and symbiogenesis associate with the rise of communitarian and socialist ideologies that opposed liberal ideas of free market economy that in turn associate with natural selection theory. And research on virolution and infectious heredity associates with attempts at eradicating disease. All aspects of reticulate evolution thus originally carried a negative sociocultural connotation. To understand why reticulate evolution has long been researched outside the mainstream Neodarwinian framework, it is necessary to go beyond comparing these theoretical frameworks from within science and the role they play in evolution, and to take the sociocultural, political and historical aspects into account.

Talk by Nathalie Gontier: Explanation in evolutionary linguistic sciences: a review of epistemological frameworks

Date and time: May 14, Monday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Nathalie Gontier (Center for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon)

Title: Explanation in evolutionary linguistic sciences: a review of epistemological frameworks

Abstract: 

Rather than present a theory on the origin and evolution of language, I focus on the various epistemological frameworks that have been introduced to understand and study the origin and evolution of language. Evolutionary linguistics is a relatively young field of research that originated a mere 30 years ago as an outgrowth, on the one hand of the rise of computational linguistics (itself an outgrowth of cybernetics and information theory), and on the other evolutionary psychology. Pinker & Bloom’s 1990 article published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences is often considered a first seminal paper, and the introduction of the EVOLANG conference series a direct response. Nonetheless, research on the origin and evolution of language is very old and has roots in, on the one hand, moral social contract theory, and on the other, the rise of natural history research. Such research originally included both synchronic and diachronic research into the origin of language, but synchronic research became favored, first, because of the publication ban on diachronic research by the French linguistic society in 1866; later due to the favoring of synchronic, systems theoretical approaches by early linguists and anthropologists, and finally due to the rise of biolinguistics. Nonetheless, research on the biological origins of language associates, on the one hand, with the rise of behaviorism, ethology, evolutionary epistemology and comparative psychology; on the other, with the continuation of diachronic sociocultural research and the continuous development of taxonomic and phylogenetic tools to classify the world different languages and their diaspora. And though evolutionary linguistics is a field that originated partly by opposing itself to Chomskyan and biolinguistic programs, the role of neuro- and biolinguists in reviving evolutionary research is not to be underestimated. Today, the study of language evolution is becoming devided into research on the origins of communication in primates, the origin and evolution of protolanguage, and the study of macroevolutionary language dynamics. While originally working from within a universal selectionist approach, the biggest challenge for the field today is incorporating findings associated with the extended evolutionary synthesis.

Date: 5th of June, 2018

Location: Sala de Juntas (Batzar Aretoa). Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Anthropology (second floor) (UPV/EHU)

Speakers: 

Harry Heft – Department of Psychology, Denison University (Ohio, USA)

Manuel Heras Escribano – IAS-Research Centre for Life, Mind, and Society, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU (Spain)

Lorena Lobo – Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Isabel I University (Spain)

Laura Menatti – UMR 5319 CNRS Passages, University of Bordeaux (France)

Mikel Subiza Pérez – Department of Psychology, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU (Spain)

Cristian Saborido – Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science, UNED, Madrid (Spain)

Info and programhttps://ecologicalcognition.wordpress.com/

 

Date: 3 – 4 May, 2018

Location: Carlos Santamaría Center (EHU – UPV), room A4

Opening: Arantza Etxeberria and Leonardo Bich (EHU – UPV)

Chairs: Argyris Arnellos (1),  Alba Amilburu (2), Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo (3), Jon Umerez (4)

Speakers: Cédric Brun (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Matteen Rafiqi (Bezmialem Vakıf University), Jan Pieter Konsman (CNRS – Université de Bordeaux) [in collaboration with Lynn Chiu, CNRS – Université de Bordeaux], Ezequiel Di Paolo (IAS- Research, Ikerbasque), Mark Canciani (IAS- Research, Universidad del País Vasco) and  Derek Skillings (CNRS – Université de Bordeaux)

Program: IV Workshop Program (new)

Abstracts: Abstracts-IV Bordeaux-San Sebastian Workshop (new)

Graduate Workshop on Philosophy of Science / Seminario de Investigación en Filosofía de la Ciencia

Date and time: March 9, Friday, 9:00 – 13:30

Location: ”Sala de Juntas” (Facultad de Educación, Filosofía y Antropología, EHU/UPV)

Opening: Alba Amilburu (EHU-UPV, IAS-Research) & Cristian Saborido (UNED)

Speakers: Alejandra Martínez Quintero (EHU-UPV), Giorgio Airoldi (UNED), Guglielmo Militello (EHU-UPV), Emilio Cáceres Vázquez (UNED)

Program: Graduate Workshop on Philosophy of Science1

IAS-Research Talk by Gustavo Caponi: “El impacto de la Filosofía Anatómica de Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire en el desarrollo de la Historia Natural”

Date and time: February 9, Friday, 12:00 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Gustavo Caponi (Departamento de Filosofía – UFSC)

Title: El impacto de la Filosofía Anatómica de Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire en el desarrollo de la Historia Natural

Abstract: Se procurará mostrar de qué manera los trabajos y las tesis de Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire [Étampes, 1772 – Paris, 1844] impactaron en el devenir la Historia Natural anterior al advenimiento del darwinismo, creando las condiciones que propiciaron la Revolución Darwiniana. Para ello se examinarán las implicaciones de su Filosofía Anatómica en el desarrollo de la Anatomía Comparada y de la Paleontología. Ese examen estará focalizado en la teoría de los análogos y en el principio de las conexiones; dándose un énfasis especial a las diferencias entre los puntos de vista de Geoffroy y los de su colega, y rival, Georges Cuvier.

Date and time: February 8, Thursday, 13:00.

Location: .”Sala de Juntas” (Facultad de Educación, Filosofía y Antropología)

Speaker: Sandra Caponi (Departamento de Sociología & Ciencia Política – UFSC)

Title: Vigilar y medicar: el DSM-5 y los trastornos mentales de la infancia