Biological Interest Group
Time: Friday mornings 10:15-11:30 am Central time
Place: 737 Heller Hall and online via Zoom.
The biological interest group (BIG) reads and discusses works of mutual interest in the history and philosophy of biology. We select readings for a variety of reasons: to keep up on the most exciting developments in the field, to help participants scrutinize literature relevant to their research projects (faculty or graduate student research), to provide feedback on works in progress being written by BIG participants (graduate students, faculty, and Center visitors), to revisit classic articles in the literature, and sometimes just to have fun discussing a topic related to biology. For more information, please contact Alan Love ([email protected]).
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Spring 2025
January 24: Please note that there are two readings for this week.
Adamala, Katarzyna P., et al. 2024. Confronting risks of mirror life. Science 386, 1351-1353. DOI:10.1126/science.ads9158. PDF.
Evans, Sam Weiss. Spring 2022. When All Research Is Dual Use. Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 3: 84–87. PDF.
January 31: Boyd, R. & Richerson, P.J. 2024. Cultural evolution: Where we have been and where we are going (maybe). Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (48) e2322879121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322879121. PDF.
February 7: Lala, K.N. & Feldman, M.W. 2024. Genes, culture, and scientific racism. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 121 (48) e2322874121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2322874121. PDF.
February 14: Pape, M., et al. 2024. Sex contextualism in laboratory research: Enhancing rigor and precision in the study of sex-related variables. Cell, Volume 187, Issue 6, 1316-1326. PDF.
February 21: Watkins, A., DiMarco, M. 2025. Sex eliminativism. Biol Philos 40, 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-024-09972-y. PDF.
February 28: Please note that there are two readings for this week.
Reber, A. S., Miller, W. B. Jr, Slijepcevic P., Baluška F. 2024. The CBC theory and its entailments: Why current models of the origin of consciousness fail. EMBO Reports. 25(1):8-12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-023-00004-6. PDF.
Robinson, D. G., et al. 2024. Cell consciousness: A dissenting opinion. EMBO Reports, 25, 2162–2167. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44319-024-00127-4. PDF.
March 7: No meeting.
March 14: No meeting.
March 21: Kweon, H., Burik, C.A.P., Ning, Y. et al. Associations between common genetic variants and income provide insights about the socio-economic health gradient. Nat Hum Behav (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02080-7. PDF.
March 28: Nemati, N. 2024. Rethinking Neuroscientific Methodology: Lived Experience in Behavioral Studies. Biol Theory 19, 184–197. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-024-00460-w. PDF.
April 4: Kocher, C. D., Dill, K. A. 2024. Origins of Life: The Protein Folding Problem all over again? Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 121(34):e2315000121. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2315000121. PDF.
April 11: Dang, H. 2024. Minority Reports: Registering Dissent in Science. Philosophy of Science. 91(5):1169-1178. doi:10.1017/psa.2023.164. PDF.
April 18: Reading TBC.
April 25: Reading TBC.
Our meetings are informal and some participants need to arrive late or leave early because of scheduling conflicts. All faculty from the University of Minnesota and area colleges and universities and graduate students are welcome to attend whenever they would like (without invitation) and without giving advanced notice. Undergraduates are included by invitation. (If you know of an undergraduate who is well-suited and possibly interested, please contact Alan Love at [email protected] so an invitation can be extended.)
Fall 2024
September 6: Robinson, D.G., et al. 2024. Mother trees, altruistic fungi, and the perils of plant personification. Trends in Plant Science 29:20-31.
September 13: Gamboa, JP. Work-in-progress. Neuroscientists Do Not Seek Realizers of Cognition
September 20: Hoquet, T. 2024. Darwin and the White Shipwrecked Sailor: Beyond Blending Inheritance and the Jenkin Myth. Journal of the History of Biology 57:17–49 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09770-y
September 27: Depew, D. 2024. Richard Lewontin and Theodosius Dobzhansky: Genetics, Race, and the Anxiety of Influence. Biological Theory 19:151–167. DOI: 10.1007/s13752-023-00452-2
October 4: Schneider, T. 2024. The Microbiome Function in a Host Organism: A Medical Puzzle or an Essential Ecological Environment? Biological Theory 19:44–55
October 11: Ross, L.N. forthcoming. Cascade versus Mechanism: The Diversity of Causal Structure in Science. British Journal for Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/723623
Lauren Ross, UC Irvine will be visiting.
October 18: No Meeting
October 25: Medzhitov, R. and A. Iwasaki. 2024. Exploring new perspectives in immunology. Cell 187:2079-2094.
November 1: Quinn, A. 2021. Transparency and secrecy in citizen science: Lessons from herping. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 85 208e217.
Aleta Quinn, University of Idaho will be visiting
November 8: Dewey, A.R. 2024. Anatomy’s role in mechanistic explanations of organism behaviour. Synthese 203:137.
November 15: No Meeting
November 22: Cooper, K.L. 2024. The case against simplistic genetic explanations of evolution. Development 151(20):dev203077.
November 29: No Meeting, Thanksgiving
December 6: Work-in-progress: Joel R. Schneider, Jaron Magstadt, Alyssa N. Olson, Annika Pokorny, Allison Blaskowski, Emily P. Driessen, Katherine L. Furniss, Kristina K. Prescott, A. Kelly Lane Working Toward Unifying a Fragmented Theory of Genetic Essentialism in Biology Education by Bridging Literature and Student Beliefs about Race