Participants

Lenny Moss studied biology and chemistry at San Francisco State University, doctoral studies in biophysics and biochemistry at UC Berkeley, completing his doctorate in cell biological research at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs. He the did post-doctoral research in human developmental cell biology at UC San Francisco Medical Center and a second PhD in philosophy at Northwestern University. Moss was a professor of philosophy for over 20 years at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Exeter. His interests and publications range from philosophical and theoretical biology to philosophical anthropology, social ontology, philosophy of mind and critical social theory with an overarching interest in bringing together questions of naturalism and normativity, and non-reductively bridging the chasm between “nature” and “culture”. He is the author of "What Genes Can’t Do" (MIT, 2003). A new book entitled "The Gambit of Geist – Naturalism, Normativity and the Hybrid Hominin" is presently in preparation.

Matteo Mossio is Chargé de recherche (tenured) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), full member of the IHPST (https://ihpst.pantheonsorbonne.fr/), Paris, France. Matteo Mossio works mainly in philosophical and theoretical issues related to biological autonomy. He published several articles in international philosophical and scientific journals as well as chapters in collective volumes. In 2015, he published (together with Alvaro Moreno) a full monograph on the theory of autonomy (https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789401798365). Matteo Mossio obtained funding for and took part in numerous research projects in France and abroad. He attended or organised over 90 national and international seminars, workshops, symposia and summer schools, and served as a reviewer for many international philosophical and scientific journals. He supervised several PhD and Master students. He regularly teaches in the Philosophy Program of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon – Sorbonne.

I studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate (Bombay University) and took a doctoral degree in physics (University of Chicago). My research has been in developmental biology initially, and subsequently in evolutionary biology. My main interest has been the development and evolution of social behaviour in the social amoebae, with a particular emphasis on how single cell properties, especially their heterogeneities, are correlated with collective behaviour. I enjoy teaching and writing for non-specialists.

Stuart A. Newman is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York. His early scientific training was in chemistry (A.B., Columbia, Ph.D., University of Chicago), but he moved into biology, both experimental and theoretical. He has contributed to several fields, including biophysical chemistry, embryonic morphogenesis, and evolutionary theory. His theoretical work includes a mechanism for patterning of the vertebrate limb skeleton based on the physics of self-organizing systems, and a physico-genetic framework for understanding the origination of animal body plans. His experimental work includes the characterization of the biophysical process of “matrix-driven translocation” of cells. Newman has also written on ethical and societal issues related to research in developmental biology and was a founding member the Council for Responsible Genetics (Cambridge, Mass.). He is an external faculty member of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, Klosterneuburg, Austria, and editor of the institute’s journal Biological Theory.

Daniel J. Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at George Mason University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Exeter, an M.A. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Leeds, and an M.Biol. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Bath. Dr. Nicholson's research is characterized by a strongly interdisciplinary engagement with the conceptual foundations of the life sciences—an engagement that combines and integrates historical, philosophical, and theoretical approaches. A central organizing theme of his research is the ontology of living systems, particularly the ways in which organisms differ from other complex organized systems like machines, and on the epistemic implications of these differences. His work can be regarded as a concerted attempt to revive an organism-centred philosophy of biology capable of overcoming the mechanicist and reductionist limitations of late twentieth-century biology.

I am Associate Professor of Epistemology of Science and Science Education at the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD), Brazil. I am affiliated to the Graduate Studies Program in History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching (Federal University of Bahia and State University of Feira de Santana). My research interests are in science education research, philosophy of biology and ethics. Also, I'm a researcher of the National Institute of Science and Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution (INCT IN-TREE), funded by the Brazilian agencies CNPq and CAPES, and gathering 200 researchers from different fields.

Laura Nuño de la Rosa is a philosopher of biology working on the history and philosophy of developmental biology and evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Graduated in Humanities, in 2010 she obtained a Master’s Degree in Biophysics at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 2012 she obtained a Ph.D. on the problem of organismal form in contemporary biology, at the Complutense University of Madrid and the Paris 1-Sorbonne University. After enjoying postdoc positions at the KLI Institute (Klosterneuburg, Austria) and the University of the Basque Country, in 2015 she joined the Department of Logic and Theoretical Philosophy at the Complutense University. Her current interests combine research on the recent history of evolutionary biology with the study of epistemological and ontological issues in contemporary biology, as well as the social implications of biosciences, including synthetic biology, theories of reproduction, and the sciences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

David S. Oderberg is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, England and current Head of Department. He is the author of six books including Real Essentialism (2007) and The Metaphysics of Good and Evil (2020), as well as editing or co-editing several others in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, including Classifying Reality (2013). He is also the author of over seventy articles in metaphysics, philosophy of biology, ethics, philosophy of religion, and other subjects. In 2013 Professor Oderberg delivered the George Hourani Lectures at SUNY Buffalo. He also edits Ratio, an international journal of analytic philosophy, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK.