Abstract

Recent and ongoing debates in biology and in the philosophy of biology reveal widespread dissatisfaction with the current definitions or circumscriptions, which are often vague or controversial, of key concepts such as the gene, individual, species, and homology, and even of whole disciplinary fields within the life sciences. To some extent, the long growing awareness of these conceptual issues and the contrasting views defended in their regard can be construed as a symptom of the need to revisit traditional unchallenged partitions between the specialist disciplines within the life sciences. I argue here that the current relationships between anchor disciplines (e.g., developmental biology, evolutionary biology, biology of reproduction) and nomadic concepts wandering between them is worth being explored from a reciprocal perspective, by selecting suitable anchor concepts around which disciplinary fields can flexibly move. Three examples are offered, focusing on generalized anchor concepts of generation (redefined in a way that suggests new perspectives on development and reproduction), organizational module (with a wide-ranging domain of application in comparative morphology, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology) and species as unit of representation of biological diversity (suggesting a taxonomic pluralism that must be managed with suitable adjustments of current nomenclature rules).

Highlights

  • The traditional articulation of biology into main research domains is not always satisfactory.For example, delimiting reproduction from other biological processes is not as easy as it might seem [1].Let us focus on a strawberry plant

  • The current relationships between the traditional disciplines and a number of core concepts that change meaning while used in widely different disciplinary contexts is worth being explored from a reciprocal perspective, by selecting suitable anchor concepts around which disciplinary fields can flexibly move

  • Few of the most important concepts in biology have taken on the character of nomadic concepts for as long as the concept of species, to the point that the topic already turned into a ‘species problem’ more than a hundred years ago

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Summary

Introduction

The traditional articulation of biology into main research domains is not always satisfactory. Harper and James White [2], even in the presence of a single genet (genetic individual), the production of runners leads to the formation of a new ramet, an anatomically separate individual, which is the outcome of a reproductive event. E.g., pythons, in conditions of prolonged fasting the intestine undergoes a morphological and functional regression [3]; after a meal, cell proliferation reactivates the intestinal epithelium, which resumes its organization and functionality This is accompanied by a rapid change in gene expression [4]. The first example suggests redefined concepts of generation as units in a periodization of the life cycles that opens new perspectives on both development and reproduction, and their evolution. The third example suggests adopting a flexible notion of species as unit of representation of biological diversity, as anchor species within which the different species notions can be accommodated in a disciplined form of pluralism

Multidisciplinary or Interdisciplinary?
Hybrid Disciplines—The Case of Evolutionary Developmental Biology
Beyond Hierarchies and Facile Interdisciplinary Transfers
Moving Ahead—Nomadic Concepts or Nomadic Disciplines?
Anchor Concept 1—Nomadic Disciplines in the Study of the Life Cycle
Anchor Concept 2—Organizational Module
Anchor Concept 3—Species as Unit of Representation of Biological Diversity
Summary and Conclusions
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