Ontological Issues in the Life Sciences

Abstract

In September 2014, the third European Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences (EASPLS) took place at The KLI Institute in Klosterneuburg, outside Vienna. The EASPLS meetings are biennial conferences coordinated by a number of major European institutions involved in the philosophy of the life sciences: Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences (Exeter); the European School for Molecular Medicine (SEMM, Milan); Department of Health Sciences, University of Milan; the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (IHPST, Paris); the KLI (Klosterneuburg); the Institut Universitaire de Formation des Enseignants (IUFE) and Department of Philosophy, University of Geneva; and the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country (San Sebastian). This year’s meeting was directed principally by Werner Callebaut (KLI) and Giovanni Boniolo (European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milan). The seminar focused on ‘‘ontological issues in the life sciences,’’ a theme that deserves some general comment. For much of the twentieth century, and perhaps still to some extent today, the notion that there would be ontological issues in the life sciences might have sounded strange. Ontology has traditionally been conceived as an area of pure philosophy far removed from the concerns and the possible contributions of the empirical sciences. Conversely, it would seem that any issues that might arise in the life sciences should be resolvable from within, rather than calling for philosophical or ontological intervention. This methodological division partly reflects the strict partition between philosophy and science that was embedded in the old positivistic philosophy of science of Carnap, Neurath, and others belonging to the Vienna Circle. Several developments have contributed to the erosion of this In memoriam: Werner Callebaut.