It’s a process: Searching for meaning among the microbes

Abstract

John Dupre has spent his career pushing against boundaries in biology and its philosophy. In the process of building a cottage industry out of disrupting what appeared to be fairly settled biological categories, Dupre managed to articulate an influential general metaphysics of science that was able to give us much of what we wanted from scientific realism while still remaining faithful to the heterodox duprevity of the ‘‘Disunity of Science’’ school. All the while, his work in these domains maintained a fruitful back and forth with the subject of human nature, where he continues to resist campaigns to homogenize Homo in a variety of disciplines. Processes of Life brings together a number of Dupre’s essays over the last decade that aim to further dupreve our thinking on matters that have traditionally dominated his scholarly agenda, this time with work on microbiology and process ontology leading the charge (for which he recently received a major grant from the European Research Council). As usual, Dupre’s work is a pleasure to read, and readers will surely appreciate the ease with which they can now access the pieces previously published as book chapters. But this particular collection of essays, I’m afraid, will not be successful in extending the reach of Dupre’s thought in the philosophy of biology. The most philosophically interesting discussions are not significant departures from the work for which he’s best known, and the most significant departures from the work for which he’s best known are not that philosophically