Conclusion

This chapter investigates the role of a conceptual framework–indeed, several such frameworks–in the coming together of the science we now call ‘biology’. The philosophical side, one of the points we hope emerges from these chapters is that the face of philosophy of biology looks rather different depending on which elements of the history of this science it chooses to emphasize. But, interestingly, this distinction, Philippe Huneman suggests, also captures the back-and-forth between the historical narrative of biology and the philosophy of biology proper: think, for instance, of the relation between scholarship on the modern synthesis and the philosophical debates of recent decades on the notion of ‘fitness’. A philosophy of biology in which Darwin is the ‘great man’ will have different priorities, methods and indeed language than one in which focuses on Kant–or on a network of lesser-known figures who, instead of being ‘evolutionists’, were fixated on morphology, development and/or laws of vital organization.

Evolution and Science Education · Medicine · Philosophy and History of Science · Race, Genetics, and Society