March 29th – April 1st, Institut d’Etudes Scientifiques de Cargèse, Corsica, France
The CNRS School BioPerspectives will offer an advanced training in philosophy of biology, by focusing on the philosophical and epistemological challenges originated by the emergence of new research domains as, in particular, molecular epigenetics, metagenomics, systems biology and synthetic biology.
Those new disciplines challenge the mainstream approaches in biology during the 20th century, and open the way to a more interactive and integrative perspective, by relying on new technologies for data production and analysis (as, for instance, next-generation sequencing techniques and new algorithms for treating massive experimental data). Such an expansion and diversification entail major transformations – both theoretical and methodological – in the study of the functioning, development and evolution of biological organisms.
After having mostly focused for several decades on evolutionary biology, philosophy of biology must today widen its scope, and profoundly renew the object of its reflexion. The central objective of BioPerspectives is to identify the main conceptual and epistemological challenges with which philosophy of biology will deal for the next decade and beyond.