Dialectical Systems
A forum in Biology, Ecology and Cognitive Science
- Extending the evolutionary synthesis isn’t enough Rasmus Haukedal's new book calls for a truly dialectical biology: from autopoiesis to sympoiesis, from efficient causes to enablement, and an innovative take on plasticity, canalisation & habit. dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- Enaction meets dialectics! New paper out on how sensorimotor agency scales up to social normativity link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Materiality isn’t a backdrop to cognition, but one of its central conditions The upcoming workshop “Habits, Tools, and Material Environments” examines how cognition is socially distributed, ecologically embedded, and enacted through material engagement dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...
- 40 years after The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Lewontin’s legacy still challenges how we think about life A new report revisits his intertwining of philosophy, biology, and Marxism—and how organisms are subjects of their own evolution www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
- Very nice upcoming workshop at the Center for Philosophical Psychology (University of Antwerp) on how radical embodiment unfolds in complex, “wild” real-world environments. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...
- Marx as a philosophical biologist? Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- ➡️New article out⬅️ @leonardobich.bsky.social and @lauramenatti.bsky.social argue that health is not about balance or stability, but about adapting and transforming in response to changing circumstances — the capacity for adaptive change. link.springer.com/journal/13752
- How did regulation and agency arise before genes? Shirt-Ediss et al. model evolving protocell ecologies with the Araudia platform—showing how simple metabolic systems can “learn” to adapt to changing environments dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- How does life emerge from nonlife? New special issue of the Royal Transactions brings together leading thinkers on the origins of life—where chemistry meets information, and evolution unfolds through the “adjacent possible.” dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- 📖 New Book Out Alvaro Moreno & Juli Peretó explore the major transitions in biological agency—from origins of life to metazoans—showing how agency drives the evolution of biological complexity www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin A hybrid conference bringing together voices old and new to revisit how The Dialectical Biologist still resonates, and reinvigorates, contemporary biology www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/diale...
- Dialectics meets the enactive approach! Join us for Dialectics and the Embodied Mind 📍 Univ. of Luxembourg | Sept 22–23 dialecticalsystems.eu/events/inter...
- Since its beginnings, the enactive approach has shown how autonomy is scaffolded across biological, sensorimotor, and social dimensions. This new video interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo tells the story in an accessible way: youtube.com/watch?v=y4Dz...
- Integrating dialectical insights into cognitive science has driven advances in the enactive approach. This new paper opens a dialogue between enaction and Marxism, highlighting labor as a form of an ecological and distributed cognition link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Today we celebrate the new edition of Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) from MIT Press, with a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo & Evan Thompson, reconnecting Varela's legacy in cognitive science to his theoretical biology dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- Embodied & enactive approaches aren’t just about individual cognition — they’re about society. A new Mind & Society special issue brings enactivism into conversation with ethics, social theory & political philosophy. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- Collin Lucken & Elmo Feiten use the enactive concept of participatory sense-making to ground public science engagement, showing how core ideas from embodied cognition can scale beyond motor coordination to illuminate social cognition in practice www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Henry Potter and @wiringthebrain.bsky.social challenge reductive views in neuroscience by introducing richer, temporally extended notions of causality and arguing to re-center cognition and the organism as genuine causal agents in behavior onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Adaptivity is central to life, yet conceptually homeless. While adaptation is tied to selection, adaptivity is an ongoing organismal process—rooted in metabolism, not just evolutionary causation www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
- Can natural selection shape the ability to evolve? New study shows bacteria evolving mutations that speed up adaptation—suggesting mutations are not purely random but can be biased toward adaptive outcomes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
- CFP: Towards Comparative Philosophy of Science (Journal for General Philosophy of Science) Call for papers on comparative philosophy of science is out,, ed;: Simon Lohse and Karim Bschir. Submissions until 31 March 2025. philevents.org/event/show/1...
- Is teleology really obsolete? This special issue explores how goal-directedness remains crucial in biology, mind, and society—despite its exile from analytic philosophy. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #Philosophy #Teleology
- A new study delves into Heidegger’s early critique of Hegel, analysing their divergent views on time and ontology. By examining their distinct conceptions of temporality, the work clarifies the essential differences between their philosophical systems. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- This new paper examines the concept of closure of constraints as a modeling tool. This interpretation clarifies the scope and applicability of biological autonomy, addressing common criticisms regarding the over-liberality of the framework www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- New OA paper by Charbel El-Hani et al. explores how living beings are individuated as causal systems via biological autonomy, with closure of constraints as a distinctively biological causal regime that defines system boundaries. 🔗 taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-...
- CFA: 1st International Conference on Anticipatory Systems & Rosennean Complexity 📅 May 22-23, 2025 📍 National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City 📝 Abstract Deadline: Feb 28, 2025 📢 Notification: Mar 10, 2025 🌐 anticipation.philcomp.org
- 📝 CFA: Prospects for the Science of Enaction Special issue of Adaptive Behavior Deadline: January 27th www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/cfa-s...
- New paper by @leonardobich.bsky.social and Bill Bechtel reappraising the original notion of homeostasis, as developed by Bernard and Cannon, beyond the restricted interpretation conveyed to us by cybernetics doi.org/10.1017/psa....
- @leonardobich.bsky.social offers a fresh take on organizational accounts in theoretical biology, tracing their evolution from cybernetics & systems theory to autopoiesis and closure of constraints, with a groundbreaking view on regulation & biological control www.cambridge.org/core/books/b...
- Great paper by Yogi Jaeger, Denis Walsh et al. A sweeping overview of the complex adaptive systems approach to organisms, arguing why their behavior & evolution defy computable models, while bridging open research issues in biology, cognitive science & AI frontiersin.org/journals/psy...
- New paper on the role of nutritin in Claude Bernard's biological philosophy Nutrition as an "interfield" object that bridges physiology, organic chemistry, and levels of inquiry—from cell to organism link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- 🚨 Call open for a postdoc position on ecosystem individuation. I interdisciplinary project uniting IHPST (CNRS/Paris 1), Centre Cavaillès (ENS), and the Universities of São Paulo & Bahia 📅 Deadline: Dec 4th www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/postd...
- New special issue just published in Ratio: "Purpose in Biology: New Directions" #philbio onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679329...
- Check out the latest post by Mathilde Tahar discussing her newly published book! She explores how Bergson's concept of creative evolution connects to contemporary developments in evolutionary theory dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
- 📢 Talk Alert: Recognizing Animal Agency in Environmental Conservation 🗓️ When: Nov 18, 18:30 CET Conventional conservation methods often overlook animal agency, impacting intervention outcomes dialecticalsystems.eu/events/recog...
- Open PhD position at IAS_Research (University of the Basque Country) within the project “Outagencies: Varieties of autonomous agency across living, humanimal, and technical systems” more info here: outonomy.net/2024/10/30/p... project description: outonomy.net/project-desc...
- 🚨 Paper Alert! "Six Personas to Adopt When Framing Theoretical Research Questions in Biology" guides research framing and debunks common misconceptions about theory. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #ProcB #Biology #Ecology #Evolution
- New contribution by Hanzhe Dong and @gualtiero.bsky.social "Rethinking Biological Functions: A Goal-Contribution Approach and Its Systemic Implications" www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
- New ways of looking at biological functions focus on how an organism’s traits help it meet its current goals, instead of just looking at its evolutionary past. These ideas offer a new way to think about biology and the mind, giving us a better understanding of both.
- 🌍 BIENNIAL SUMMER MEETING: ISHPSSB 2025 📅 Deadline: November 1, 2024 📍 Where: University of Porto, Portugal 🗓️ When: July 20–25, 2025 Reminder: Submit your session proposals soon! #ISHPSSB2025 #Porto2025 #CallForProposals #AcademicConferences
- Homeostasis has been invoked as central for physiology. It has also been the target of criticisms that led to the introduction of alternative concepts. This paper advances a framework in which regulation is viewed from the perspective of the organism physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/...
- New paper by William Bechtel and @leonardobich.bsky.social published in The Journal of Physiology
- Bergson supported the idea of evolution but was critical of how it was studied, arguing that the evolutionary theory of his time overlooked the historical and creative capacities of living beings New monograph out: www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
- 📚 Kevin Lala on how philosophical collaborations shaped his upcoming book 'Evolution Evolving', the story behind it and the future of evolutionary biology🧬 dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution... #EvolutionEvolving #PhilosophyInScience #EvolutionaryBiology #BiologyAndPhilosophy
- Eating is essential for all organisms. Even simple animals like Porifera and Placozoa, without neurons or muscles, coordinate cell activities to eat, involving cognitive processes This supports the idea that cognition begins with chemical signaling link.springer.com/article/10.1...
- Autonomous systems do more than maintain themselves; they actively respond to environmental affordances by regulating behavior New paper by @leonardobich.bsky.social on organizational teleology onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- In this paper, Denis Walsh explores Piaget’s theory of equilibration and its significance in moving beyond the Modern Synthesis, transitioning from an object theory to an agent theory of evolution karger.com/hde/article/... #agency #evolution #philbio
- A short genealogy of #bioagentialism through #Aristotle, #Hegel and contemporary #philbio by @hylomorphic.bsky.social www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
- New issue of Biological Theory with a thematic section on biological agency Papers by Virenque & Mossio on agency in biological autonomy, Pickering on agency in Science Studies, Okasha on agency and evolution, and a commentary essay by Lenny Moss link.springer.com/journal/1375...
- A few pointers (and some literature) on how to apply the theory of biological autonomy and the notion of organizational closure to ecological systems www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...
