Date and time: March 1, Thursday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Johannes Jaeger. Associate Faculty, Complexity Science Hub (CSH) Vienna. Visiting Scientist, Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD)

Title: Structuralist perspectives on the evolution of developmental processes

Abstract: The organisational approach to living systems draws on the organicist movement from the 1920s and 30s. In this lecture, I will present a different line of historical influence of this research tradition. It traces through the work of Waddington and Schmalhausen to the process structuralists of the 1970s and 80s. These biologists were less concerned with the overall organisation of autonomous self-maintaining organisms. Instead, their research focus lies on the structures underlying the dynamics of evolving developmental proc.esses. These structures are expressed in terms of morphogenetic fields and their mathematical description by systems of differential equations. They not only determine the pattern-forming repertoire of a developmental process, but also its evolutionary potential, as they determine the possible phenotypic transitions such processes can or cannot produce. In this way, they directly connect to modern concepts of evolvability and the genotype-phenotype map used in current evolutionary developmental biology. I intend to illustrate this neglected history of process structuralism with numerous examples.

Date and time: January 17, Wednesday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Cristina Moreno Lozano

Title: In between antibiotic reasons and rations. Introductory ideas to the study of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance from social science

Abstract: 

Today, health experts confirm that the development of antibiotic resistance and the decline in availability of efficacious antibiotic products is becoming a problem of extreme urgency for global health. Clinical guidelines, policy statements, scientific papers and health awareness materials have proliferated in the last few years. It is time to act, we are told, as the worst is yet to come. It seems that in a short period of time, we have passed from a spirit of optimism over the magic bullet, capable of offering the world a cure without precedents, to establish ourselves as a generation whose future healthcare could stagger if we do not act rapidly.

In the interstices between my learning of medical anthropology and biomedical science, I approach the question: how do we think the phenomenon of antibiosis[1]? The concept of “rational use” of antibiotics is used by most international health policy, implying a differentiation between rational/irrational individuals. Here, the ‘rational’ use of antibiotics is dissected: it is both about how we manage the antibiotic resources we have and how we think about them. It is about rations and reasons, about science and belief, science and culture, and everything in between. In these policy proposals, ideas of rationing, biosocial efficacy, responsibility and toxicity appear clearly, and are still to explore by qualitative research methods in the future.

This presentation hopes to leave some questions open for reflection: can social science and the humanities better understand antibiotic use from a viewpoint different from the dichotomy of rational/irrational? Can the issue of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), significantly related to antibiotic use, help us do more than seek and describe rational/ irrational behaviours? AMR is made and remade as a scientific concept and an issue for global public health as we speak. It circulates through different spaces in society, arguably reshaping human-microbe relationships, the experience of infectious disease and its cure as it goes. Can we follow the genetic and chemical traces of antibiotics and AMR in order to better embrace the complexity of the issue?

[1] The concept of ‘Antibiosis’ is used to define a biological interaction between two or more microorganisms that is detrimental to at least one of them. The application of antibiotic substances by some microorganisms against others is only one example of this biological phenomenon.

Date and time: December 5, Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Mihaela Pavlicev, University of Cincinnati, Department of Pediatrics

Abstract: 

Societal perception, and even the perception of textbook biology and medicine, often reduces female biology to its reproductive function. This has many consequences for the attitude towards female traits, including the attitude of the women themselves, and particularly towards the female traits that have no direct function in reproduction. It is also reflected in medical vocabulary and treatment.  Intriguingly, much of this perception is not based on scientific facts, but likely originates from the way the research questions have been asked in the past, and how the results have been interpreted. I will present some of the recent research on the origin of female orgasm, as well as the physiological basis of the menstruation- examples of female traits often considered “obsolete”. I hope to elicit a discussion on how we can use research insights to re-interpret the female traits in a more accurate, and less damaging, way.

Date and time: November 7, Tuesday, 12:15 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Javier Suárez (http://www.ub.edu/grc_logos/javier-suarez1) is PhD student in philosophy at the University of Barcelona and the University of Exeter.

Abstract: Holobionts are biological entities that consist of a multicellular eukaryotic host plus its symbiotic microbiota. Holobionts are supposed to be pervasive and they are supposed to bear emergent traits, resulting from the dynamic interactions between the host and its symbionts. Defenders of the holobiont have recently developed the “hologenome concept of evolution”, according to which holobionts are units of selection in evolution. This claim has been recently contested by many, who claim that holobionts cannot be units of selection because the entities that compose a holobiont are not faithfully transmitted intergenerationally and therefore their influence in the holobiont is not evolutionarily constant. In this paper, I contend their argument by distinguishing between the notions of stability of lineages and stability of traits. Stability of lineages requires the different species that integrate a holobiont to be transmitted every generation in order to have a unit of selection. Stability of traits, however, requires that the traits that are identified in every new generation of holobionts are the same, in order to have a unit of selection. I defend that the arguments that have been offered against the role of holobionts as units of selection assume the idea of stability of lineages and argue that the idea of stability of traits is more suitable for capturing the role of holobionts as units of selection.

Date and Time: November 7, Tuesday, 11:00 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Marc Canciani

Abstract: The superorganism, in the context of eusociality, is typically either understood as a heuristic tool used to better understand group dynamics within colonies or as a form of biological individuality, based on an evolutionary notion of individual. We argue that the concept should be understood similarly to that of its original notion, as denoting higher-level individuals, rather than heuristically. However, the definition of an evolutionary individual (a unit of selection, or alignment of fitness of the parts) is too vague and therefore there are no clear conditions for ascertaining whether a colony is a superorganism or not. We develop a synchronic, organizational approach derived from the Autonomous Perspective, which defines organisms as autonomous individuals. As opposed to the Self-Organization notion (the current mainstream synchronic approach), we argue that the organizational complexity within eusocial colonies should the basis for defining the notion of superorganism. Even though there are processes that are the result of self-organization in superorganisms, we show that there are also forms of higher-level control and regulation between distinct sub-units within the system. Therefore superorganisms are more than just the result of self-organization. Moreover, superorganisms possibly represent a unique form of autonomy: a minimal form autonomy in a multi-agent system.

Date and Time: October 25, Wednesday, 15:30 p.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Mark Bedau (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bedau)

Abstract: The question how to define life is very controversial, with many answers proposed but no signs of any emerging consensus. This raises a second question, the meta-question about life: Why is the definition of life so difficult and so controversial? Various answers to the meta-question have been proposed, such as being limited to a sample size for life of only one (Sterelny, Cleland), or confusion over homonyms that share a core meaning (Shields), or our failure to recognize impossible to answer question about folk concepts and pointless questions about scientific concepts (Machery), or our mistake of human kinds for natural kinds (Keller). Most contemporary discussions of defining life and resolving its controversies seem to presuppose a Cartesian perspective on the problem, focused on whether we can identify necessary and sufficient conditions for individual living organism. This contrasts with an Aristotelian perspective on the problem, focused on finding the best explanation of the characteristic phenomena involving life, such as life’s hallmarks, its borderline cases, and its characteristic puzzles. I argue replacing the Cartesian perspective with the Aristotelian perspective provides more promise for answering the meta-question about life, and thereby eventually resolving how to define life.

Date and Time: October 24, Tuesday, 11:00 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Mark Bedau (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bedau)

Abstract: Darwin showed that biological populations evolve by natural selection., Some have suggested that natural selection also applies to the evolution of human cultures. Let us call the thesis that there are some populations of cultural entities that evolve by natural selection “cultural Darwinism.” This thesis is controversial today, with avid supporters and adamant critics. The main criticisms lodged against cultural Darwinism are (i) that it is not operational, (ii) that, if operational, it is false, (iii) that, if true, it is fruitless and uninteresting, and (iv) that it presupposes a false atomism about culture. This talk defends the thesis of cultural Darwinism by showing that natural selection shapes at least one population of cultural items–specifically, patented technology–and that the four criticisms of cultural Darwinism all can all be addressed in this context.

Date and Time: May 16, Tuesday, 11:00 a.m.

Location: Carlos Santamaría Building, Room B14.

Speaker: Mª José Ferreira, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) y Conicet

Abstract: 

The notion of an informational parity between genes and non-genetic
factors appears in two ways in the literature. On the one hand, it is
claimed to follow from an information-theoretic approach to account
for the notion of information in biology. This consequence, as we
shall explain, is considered to be unacceptable for some authors
which, therefore, took a different approach in order to save the
informational exclusiveness of genes. On the other hand, informational
parity is one of the many versions of the causal parity thesis,
according to which genes and other developmental factors are causally
on a par. According to this view, causal parity is an actual feature
of living systems and the concept of information needs to be congruent
to this fact. We will argue that in both cases there is a deep
conflation between the concepts of information and causation (as
concepts undisputedly related) that has not been sufficiently
addressed, especially with respect to the quarrel over parity. Such a
conflation has a twofold origin: (i) a rough understanding of
causation and (ii) a misreading of information theory.