Riddle of Organismal Agency

Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven. He obtained a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum and was a Writing-Up Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research. His research concentrates on the history and philosophy of biology, with a specific emphasis on how organism–environment interactions are construed in evolutionary biology and ecology.Jan Baedke is Professor at the Department of Philosophy I, Ruhr University Bochum. His research is characterised by an integrated approach to the history and philosophy of the life sciences, with a focus on evolutionary biology and microbiology. He is the author of Above the Gene, Beyond Biology: Toward a Philosophy of Epigenetics (2018) and PI of the German Research Foundation-funded research group “ROTO” (The Return of the Organism in the Bio-sciences: Theoretical, Historical, and Social Dimensions).Guido I. Prieto is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Individualisation in Changing Environments research association (InChangE), Department of Philosophy, Bielefeld University. A biologist by training and self-taught scientific illustrator, he obtained a PhD in Philosophy at Ruhr University Bochum. His research focuses on the philosophical elucidation of the concepts of “organism” and “biological individual” and their roles within and outside biology. He is also interested in the philosophy and practice of visual representations in the sciences.Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. His books include Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023), The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language (2007), and, as co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (2003; 2nd edition 2009). He has served as President of the British Society for the History of Science and the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology.

• 1 Organismal Agency: A Persistent Riddle in the History and Philosophy of the Life SciencesAlejandro Fábregas-Tejeda, Jan Baedke, Guido I. Prieto and Gregory RadickPart I: Trajectories of Organismal Agency in the History of the Life Sciences and Philosophy2 The Problem of “Organismal Agency” in the History of the Life SciencesMaurizio Esposito3 Charting Contrasting Stances on Organismal Purposiveness and Agency in Early Twentieth-Century BiologyAlejandro Fábregas-Tejeda4 Plant Agency: A Short History from Kant to Plant Psychology, then to Holism, and Back AgainJan Baedke5 Behavior, Purpose and Teleology Revisited: Locating Cybernetic Teleology in Twentieth-Century HolismAuguste NahasPart II: Evolutionary Perspectives on Agency6 The Baldwin Effect and the Potentialities for Thoughtful Darwinism around 1900Gregory Radick7 The Higher-Order Norm of Reaction: Biological Agency and Adaptive Phenotypic ResponseDenis M. Walsh and Sonia E. Sultan8 A Critique of the Agential Stance in Development and EvolutionHenry D. Potter and Kevin J. MitchellPart III: Behaviour, Scientific Practice, and Self-Individuation 9 In Defense of the Whole: Behavioral Novelty as a Reflection of Organismal AgencyGregory M. Kohn10 Chimpanzees as “Resisters” or “Collaborators”: Animal Agency in Biomedical and Psychology Experiments at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Yale Laboratories for Primate Biology in the US (1903–1930)Marion Thomas11 Self-Individuation, Environment, and Agency: Comparing Plessner and Autopoietic EnactivismFrancesca MicheliniPart IV: Theoretical and Metaphysical Frameworks for Organismal Agency12 Agency as Internal ControlGunnar Babcock and Daniel W. McShea13 How Autonomy Theory Naturalizes Agency, and Why It MattersLouis Virenque14 Organismal Agency as a (Partly Psychological) CapacityBendik Hellem Aaby