Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences Biology

Description

Genes and the Agents of Life undertakes to rethink the place of the individual in the biological sciences, drawing parallels with the cognitive and social sciences. Genes, organisms, and species are all agents of life but how are each of these conceptualized within genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics? The book includes highly accessible discussions of genetic encoding, species and natural kinds, and pluralism above the levels of selection, drawing on work from across the biological sciences. The book is a companion to the author's Boundaries of the Mind, also available from Cambridge, where the focus is the cognitive sciences. The book will appeal to a broad range of professionals and students in philosophy, biology, and the history of science.

Robert A. Wilson was born in Broken Hill, Australia, and lives in Edmonton, Canada. He is the author or editor of five other books, including the award-winning The MIT Encyclopaedia of the Cognitive Sciences (1999) and Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, 2004).

"Wilson provides an important new perspective on many of the key problems in the philosophy of biology through his highly original focus on the locus of agency in explanations. Any philosopher with interests in the life or human sciences will gain valuable new insights from this work." Paul E. Griffiths, University of Pittsburgh "This is a bold, absorbing, and deeply-informed book...[Wilson's] views are often controversial and provocative, but always clearly and lucidly argued. As well as fostering productive debate within the philosophy of biology, this book has the potential to show a much wider audience why this discipline is currently so exciting." John Dupre, University of Exeter