First European Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Causation and Disease in the Postgenomic Era
- Hosted by the Brocher Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland, September 6 - 11, 2010 -
Participating Institutions
Brocher Foundation
ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, University of Exeter (Exeter)
European School for Molecular Medicine (Milan)
Institut d'Histoire de la Médicine et de la Santé (Geneva)
Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Paris-1 Sorbonne (Paris)
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (Altenberg)
Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin)
Directors of the Seminar
Didier Debaise (Berlin), Maria Kronfeldner (Bielefeld), Staffan Müller-Wille (Exeter)
Lecturers
Giovanni Boniolo (Milan), Werner Callebaut (Altenberg), John Dupré
(Exeter), Michael Esfeld (Lausanne), Bernardino Fantini (Geneva), Lisa
Gannett (Halifax), Jean-Paul Gaudillière (Paris), Jean Gayon (Paris),
Annick Lesne (Paris), Sandra Mitchell (Pittsburgh), Guiseppe Testa
(Milan), C. Kenneth Waters (Minneapolis)
– Call for Applications –
We are inviting postgraduate, doctoral and early career postdoctoral
researchers in the philosophy of life sciences to submit applications
for participation in the First European Advanced Seminar in the
Philosophy of the Life Sciences, to be held on the premises of the
Brocher Foundation in Hermance (Geneva), September 6–11, 2010.
The seminar is organized like a professional workshop devoted to a
broadly defined theme. There will be keynote lectures by invited
speakers, presentations and commentaries by senior and junior
participants, and ample room for interaction and discussion. We also
offer the possibility for participants to publish papers presented in a
special issue of the journal History and Philosophy of the Life
Sciences. Publication will be subject to the normal peer review process
of the journal. The seminar is part of a biennial series, organized by a
European consortium of institutions in the philosophy of life sciences
in cooperation with the Brocher Foundation. The series aims to acquaint
early career researchers with recent innovative trends in the philosophy
of the life sciences, to create a platform for developing new programs
and projects on a European level, and to facilitate exchange of
researchers among European institutions in the field. The First European
Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences will be
dedicated to the theme of causation and disease in the postgenomic era.
Early career researchers from a large spectrum of disciplines and
interests, not necessarily directly linked to philosophy of the
life-sciences, who would like to participate in the first European
Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences should send a
curriculum vitae and a letter of application describing their project
and motivating their interest in the conference to the address below,
preferably by e-mail. The deadline for applications is February 22,
2010. Decisions about participation and the programme of the seminar
will be communicated by the end of March 2010.
Participants will have to contribute a conference fee of €400, which
will cover accommodation and meals for the duration of the conference.
The Brocher Foundation provides a limited number of fellowships to
support junior participants. Those wishing to apply for these
fellowships should do so in a separate letter to the directors.
Rationale for the topic of the first Advanced Seminar
Philosophical investigations of the life sciences have traditionally
been preoccupied by two sets of problems: problems of reduction, mostly
studied with respect to classical and molecular genetics, and problems
of evolutionary theory, with a focus on selection and adaptation. It is
only recently that the field has widened. Philosophy of the life
sciences now also deals with topics belonging to the biomedical
sciences, e.g. microbiology, epidemiology, or the neurosciences.
A theme that has regained prominence due to this development is
causation in complex systems. Systems biology aims to achieve a
multi-level understanding of cells, tissues, organs, and organisms as
complex dynamic systems, invoking downward causation and emergence,
whereas synthetic biology tries to account for the complexity of
function through modular engineering-based approaches and sees the
control of biological circuits as intrinsic to this aim. Although very
different in orientation, both approaches are consistent with a
pluralist and non-reductionist understanding of biological causation,
according to which entities of any kind and at any level of complexity
can enter causal relationships, even if some entities, like genes for
example, may provide privileged entry points for investigating
biological phenomena. And despite (or because of) this pluralist and
non-reductionist understanding of causation, there is a growing optimism
in achieving a greater understanding of health and diseases and greater
capacities for medical intervention. In the philosophy of the life
sciences, these recent trends are reflected in developmental systems
theory, in new pluralistic approaches that allow conceptualising
complex, multi-level systems, and in the accounts of causation favoured
by proponents of the New Mechanism.
The renewed concern for causation and mechanisms in complex systems is
of great significance for the development of new analytical tools for
the classification, diagnosis and therapy of diseases. Some of the
research strategies that were driving biomedical research in the
‘century of the gene’ seem not to work any more in face of the
socio-bio-medical complexity now revealed. As a consequence, not only
the changes in the very concepts of health and disease, but also the
changes in their classification, diagnosis and therapy call for a
rapprochement of philosophy of biology and philosophy of medicine.
Furthermore, the masses of data obtained from genomic research and
epidemiology ask for new analytical tools to deal with these data in
order to inform clinical practice. This has become a major challenge for
biomedical science in recent years and asks for a new understanding of
the nature of evidence in medicine. Finally, some of the data now
produced revive old debates about identification of and discrimination
against ethnic, racial or other sub- populations, a topic of special
importance for understanding the mingling of science and society and
that connects the biomedical sciences to anthropology, forcing us, in
the end, to bridge the gulf separating the natural sciences from social
sciences and humanities, towards a broadened concept of life and life
sciences. Such a broadened perspective can provide novel lines of
insight for a philosophy of the life sciences in ways that may prove
relevant to the sciences as well as the philosophy of science in
general.
Please send application materials to the following address, preferably by email:
Staffan Müller-Wille
ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society
University of Exeter
Byrne House, St Germans Rd
Exeter, Devon EX4 4PJ, United Kingdom
S.E.W.Mueller-Wille@exeter.ac.uk
http://www.brocher.ch/pages/sympvenir.asp
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