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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Autumn 2025
September 5: Lynch, M. 2025. Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 122(23):e2425772122.
September 12: Mitchell, K.J. and N. Cheney. 2025. The Genomic Code: the genome instantiates a generative model of the organism. Trends in Genetics 41(6):462-479.
September 19: Lacey, H. 2021. The methodological strategies of agroecological research and the values with which they are linked. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 88:292-302. PDF.
Optional background reading: Lacey, H. 2018. Roles for values in scientific activities. Axiomathes 28:603-618. PDF.
September 26: Heger, T., A. Elliot-Graves, M.I. Kaiser, K.H. Morrow, W. Bausman, et al. 2025. Looking beyond Popper: how philosophy can be relevant to ecology. Oikos 2025(2):e10994. PDF.
October 3: Stroud, J.T., and W.C. Ratcliff. 2025. Long-term studies provide unique insights into evolution. Nature 639:589–601. PDF.
October 10: Howe, C. and L. Rieppel. 2024. Why museums should repatriate fossils. Nature 630:559-562; Rieppel, L. 2024. Earth science and extractive capitalism in the age of empire. In: Aronova, E., Sepkoski, D., Tamborini, M. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of the Earth and Environmental Sciences. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. PDF 1. PDF 2.
October 17: Plaisance, K. S. 2020. The benefits of acquiring interactional expertise: Why (some) philosophers of science should engage scientific communities. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, Volume 83:53-62. PDF.
October 24: Huang, S., A.M. Soto, and C. Sonnenschein. 2025. The end of the genetic paradigm of cancer. PLoS Biology 23(3):e3003052. PDF.
October 31: Quilty-Dunn, J., N. Porot, and E. Mandelbaum. 2023. The best game in town: The reemergence of the language-of-thought hypothesis across the cognitive sciences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46, e261: 1–21. OPTIONAL: Quilty-Dunn, J., N. Porot, and E. Mandelbaum. 2023. Commentaries and Response. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46, e261: 22–75. PDF 1. PDF 2.
November 7: Nicholson, D.J. Population thinking and the uniqueness of biological entities. Acta Biotheoretica 73:8. Open Access. Available online.
November 14: Binz, M., S. Alaniz, A. Roskies, B. Aczel, C.T. Bergstrom, C. Allen, D. Schad, D. Wulff, J.D. West, Q. Zhang, R.M. Shiffrin, S.J. Gershman, V. Popov, E.M. Bender, M. Marelli, M.M. Botvinick, Z. Akata and E. Schulz. 2025. How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(5):e2401227121. Open Access. Available online.
November 21: Smocovitis, V.B. 2023. Every evolutionist their own historian: The importance of history, context, and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. In Evolutionary Biology: Contemporary and Historical Re!ections Upon Core Theory (Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development 6), T. E. Dickins, B. J. A. Dickins (eds.), Springer, pp. 25-54. Optional: Commentaries (pp. 55-61). PDF.
*Betty Smocovitis will be visiting.
November 28: No meeting
December 5: Shyer, A.E. and A.R. Rodrigues. 2025. Transcending the hegemony of the molecular machine through an organic renewal of biology and biomedicine. Cells & Development:204018. PDF.
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.)
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: DiFrisco, J. Gawne, R. 2025. Biological agency: a concept without a research program. J Evol Biol. 38(2):143-156. doi: 10.1093/jeb/voae153. PMID: 39658090. PDF.
April 25: Eren, A. M. Banfield, J. F. (2024). Modern microbiology: Embracing complexity through integration across scales. Cell. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.028. PDF.
May 2: Trueblood, J.S. Allison, D.B. Field, S.M. Fishbach, A. Gaillard, S.D.M. Gigerenzer, G. Holmes, W.R. Lewandowsky, S. Matzke, D. Murphy, M.C. Musslick, S. Popov, V. Roskies, A.L. ter Schure, J. & Teodorescu, A.R. (2025). The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing and implications for journal reform. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (5) e2401231121, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2401231121. PDF
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