While Julian S. Huxley’s role in the Eugenics Society is well known, the ways in which his scientific research program intimately intertwined with his broader social views is sometimes overlooked. This paper analyzes Huxley’s earlier and later research centering Individual (1912) and Modern Synthesis (1942) as two case studies in the context of his larger body of work. There currently exists much exceptional literature on Huxley, which is incorporated and reviewed as much as possible. That literature explores the connection between Huxley’s biological views and social views, but there is more to say about the nature of that connection warranting a return to the details of his research program. Huxley aimed to establish the biologist’s role for engineering human evolution towards sets of ideals conceived by the educated elite.

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 47 (8): 1-28. Article Link.

Received mention in the HPS & ST February 2025 Newsletter.

This paper argues that individuating practices are produced through iterative processes of community and agent-level interactions. This claim will be demonstrated by using three case studies from biology: The structuring of data categories for data collection tables and models; establishing spatial and temporal threshold markers or limits; and the comparative use of phenomenal characteristics as cues for object identification. By drawing from examples of data classification and comparative analysis in the biological sciences, I offer a view about ‘individuation’ as double-barreled according to the method of co-constitutive conceptual analysis. Specifically, the capacity—i.e., the ability to individuate—is co-constituted by community level choices and agent applications: Individuation’s evidential role is generated, revised, and refined by scientific communities and their members through an iterative process of community and agent-level interactions.

Biology and Philosophy 39: 29. Article Link.

George G. Simpson (1902–1984) and Stephen J. Gould (1941–2002) were both engaged with the normative – i.e., social, cultural, political, and even ethical – consequences of their evolutionary theorizing. However, there is a normative point of departure between Simpson and Gould’s work in that regard that has received little attention. Yet, their motivations converge into a larger program of resistance and social protection from misconstrued and illegitimate overreaches of the biological sciences leading up to and after the peak of the modern synthesis.

Journal of the Philosophy of History 17: 104-129. Open Access Article Link.

Historical contingency has been a central theme of much recent work in the philosophy of historical science. This includes a rich and interdisciplinary literature on the role and nature of contingency in sciences like evolutionary biology, paleontology, geology, ecology, astrobiology, and more. In recent years, however, philosophers of science have given more and more attention to questions about how non-epistemic (ethical, social, political, aesthetic) values figure in the practice of science. Philosophers of historical science are just beginning to engage in this larger discussion of values in science. This special issue features new and emerging work that draws connections between the literature on historicity and historical contingency and recent work on values in science.

Journal of the Philosophy of History 17: 1-8. Open Access Article Link.

With Derek Turner

This Element develops a view about biological individuality's value in two ways: while biological individuality matters for its theoretical and methodological roles in the production of scientific knowledge, its historical use in promoting the politics of social ideologies concerning progress and perfection of humanity's evolutionary future must not be ignored. Recent trends in biological individuality are analyzed and set against the history of evolutionary thought drawing from the early twentieth century. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Biological Individuality. Cambridge Elements Series in Philosophy of Biology, Grant Ramsey and Michael Ruse (eds). Cambridge University Press. 

For reviews see:

1. Schneider, Tamar. "The myth of the value-free biological individual." Metascience (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-024-00986-6

2. Trappes, Rose. "Reorienting the Debate on Biological Individuality: Politics and Practices." Acta Biotheor 72, 4 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-024-09479-9

3. Bourrat, Pierrick. "Review of Biological Individuality. Cambridge Elements in the Philosophy of Biology. By Alison K. McConwell, 2023. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 99, 4 (2024): 233. https://doi.org/10.1086/733296

What is the relationship between evolutionary contingency and diversity? The evolutionary contingency thesis emphasizes dependency relations and chance as the hallmarks of evolution. While contingency can be destructive of, for example, the fragile and complex dynamics in an ecosystem, I will mainly focus on the productive or causal aspect of contingency for a particular sort of diversity. There are many sorts of diversities: Gould is most famous for his diversity-to-decimation model, which includes disparate body plans distinguishing different phyla. However, structural diversity construed more broadly spans scales, such as organization in and among cells, structural arrangements and biomechanics on various scales, and even the profile of ancestor-descendent relationships or community structure of interactions within ecosystems. By focusing on stochastic processes in contingent evolution, I argue that contingency causes structural diversity. Specifically, I focus on the plurality of structural types of cells, genetic codes, and phyla diversity as case studies.

Biology and Philosophy, 34: 1-26. Article Link. Preprint Link. 

On first encountering the science and philosophy of evolutionary contingency, you’d be forgiven for being intimidated by the variety of themes. From panselectionism, to (in)determinism, to predictability, repeatability, and inevitability in evolution, and whether humans are special and understanding our place in the cosmos; the contingency literature really covers it all. Jonathan Losos’s treatment of the longstanding debate over contingency in life’s history not only captures its complexity with strength, but also provides some methodological scaffolding to repair and reinforce its fractured state across biology and philosophy.

An Essay Review of Jonathan Losos: Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution (2017). Acta Biotheoretica, 67(3): 253-264. Article Link.

Recently, philosophers have sought to determine the nature of individuals relevant to evolution by natural selection or evolutionary individuals. The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis is a claim about evolution that emphasizes the role of contingency or dependency relations and chance-based factors in how evolution unfolds. In this article, I argue that if we take evolutionary contingency seriously, then we should be pluralists about the types of individuals in selection.

Philosophy of Science, 84(5): 1104-1116. Article Link.

‘Gouldian arguments’ appeal to the contingency of a scientific domain to establish that domain’s autonomy from some body of theory. For instance, pointing to evolutionary contingency, Stephen Jay Gould suggested that natural selection alone is insufficient to explain life on the macroevolutionary scale. In analysing contingency, philosophers have provided source-independent accounts, understanding how events and processes structure history without attending to the nature of those events and processes. But Gouldian Arguments require source-dependent notions of contingency. An account of contingency is source-dependent when it is indexed to (1) some pattern (i.e., microevolution or macroevolution) and (2) some process (i.e., Natural Selection, species sorting, etc.). Positions like Gould’s do not turn on the mere fact of life’s contingency—that life’s shape could have been different due to its sensitivity to initial conditions, path-dependence or stochasticity. Rather, Gouldian arguments require that the contingency is due to particular kinds of processes: in this case, those which microevolutionary theory cannot account for. This source-dependent perspective clarifies both debates about the nature and importance of contingency, and empirical routes for testing Gould’s thesis.

Biology and Philosophy, 32 (2): 243-261. Article Link.

With Adrian Currie

This monograph will contain a strong history and philosophy of science component stemming from archival work in the Gould, Simpson, Huxley, Haldane, and Mayr papers over the past six years. It will primarily aim to explore presentations of evolutionary research with respect to its social implications, specifically the biologist’s “new promise’ as social engineer in the early to mid-twentieth century. Divided into three parts, Legitimizing Evolution interrogates approaches to resolve social issues with evolutionary science; offers examples of insulating and defending that discipline’s new epistemic jurisdiction; and generates a contemporary lesson from its historical cases concerning the growth of STEM and the risk of epistemic and social harm. Book prospectus available upon request.

2017. Individuality, the Major Transitions, & the Evolutionary Contingency Thesis (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Dissertation Link.

Reviews

2021. Review of A Meaning to Life by Michael Ruse (2019). For The Quarterly Review of Biology, 96: 34-35. Review Link.
 

2020. Old Haunts and New Insights. Review of Otavio Bueno, Ruey-Lin Chen, and Melinda Bonnie Fagan (eds.) Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practice (2018). For History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 42: 4. Review Link.
 

2020. Review of Kostas Kampourakis Turning Points: How Critical Events Have Driven Human Evolution, Life, and Development (2018). For The Quarterly Review of Biology, 95(1): 78-79. Review Link. 

2016. Review of Maureen O’Malley’s Philosophy of Microbiology (2014).  In The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 67(3): 931-935. Review Link.

2015. Review of Thomas Pradeu’s The Limits of the Self:  Immunology and Biological Identity (2012).  In Philosophy in Review 35 (3): 171-173. Review Link.