Product details
- ISBN 9780367661625
- Weight: 660g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Sep 2020
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The use of the term "biology" to refer to a unified science of life emerged around 1800 (most prominently by scientists such as Lamarck and Treviranus, although scholarship has indicated its usage at least 30-40 years earlier). The interplay between philosophy and natural science has also accompanied the constitution of biology as a science.
Philosophy of Biology Before Biology examines biological and protobiological writings from the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century (from Buffon to Cuvier; Kant to Oken; and Kielmeyer) with two major sets of questions in mind:
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- What were the distinctive conceptual features of the move toward biology as a science?
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- What were the relations and differences between the "philosophical" focus on the nature of living entities, and the "scientific" focus?
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This insightful volume produces a fresh but also systematic perspective both on the history of biology as a science and on the early versions of, in the 1960s in a post-positivist context, the philosophy of biology. It will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as history of science, philosophy of science and biology.
Cécilia Bognon-Küss is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Paris 7 ('Who am I?' Labex).
Charles T. Wolfe is a researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Belgium.
