Dr Johannes Jaeger: Chasing Windmills – The Quixotic Quest for a 21st Century Philosophical Biology

Part of the UCL CDB Seminar Series – Johannes Jaeger's seminar, given at 12:00 (GMT) on 20 October 2022, at UCL, London, UK. Hosted by Jonas Hartmann. Chasing Windmills – The Quixotic Quest for a 21st Century Philosophical Biology Abstract: As Johannes Jaeger says: "You may not know this, few people do, but biology urgently needs more philosophy – not the philosophy of biology, but philosophical thought in biology, a more philosophical biology. "Based on recent history, many of you may be convinced that progress in our discipline derives from technological and methodological advances. Indeed, we have much to show for that. The rate at which we develop new techniques, produce ever more comprehensive data sets, and publish fanciful papers appears to be increasing inexorably. "And yet, there is growing concern that this is not necessarily a good thing. Beyond the obvious impact this cult of productivity has on researchers (especially young ones), a worrisome gap is opening up between our power to manipulate living systems, and our understanding of the complex context and consequences of these manipulations. We are running through the dark woods, blindly. Even worse, we have hit a solid wall in terms of understanding life itself, and therefore understanding our own place in the world. We are drowning in data, yet severely lacking in wisdom. "We urgently need to relearn to ask the big questions. We have simply declared the mystery of life solved by explaining the problem away, by reducing organisms to programmes and machines." Yet, Johannes Jaeger claims that we understand what life is (and what it is worth) less than ever before in humanity’s history. He explains why the mechanistic view of biology is based on fundamentally flawed philosophical and ethical assumptions, and why it flies in the face of empirical evidence about the living world. Johannes' stated quest is to challenge reductionist biology by providing a viable alternative, robustly grounded in the best philosophy of science available today, that allows us to tackle life on its own terms; a true biology that stands on its own feet; a science that takes the organism seriously. Johannes agrees that this is no easy task. Within our field, thinking is often equated with idling. There can be no time for reflection as we produce our next big data set. In our frantic academic environment, you have to become an outcast, like the knight errant in the title of my talk, to tackle these fundamental questions. Let me point you to a few windmills worth chasing. Speaker: Johannes Jaeger is a freelance philosopher, researcher & educator.