PHIL 421: Seminar

PHIL 421-001: Seminar in Philosophy
(Spring 2024)

04:30 PM to 07:10 PM M

Horizon Hall 1010

Section Information for Spring 2024

This course considers one of the most exciting and rapidly growing areas of contemporary philosophy:
the philosophy of biology. Biology is a fertile field of philosophical inquiry, dealing as it does with the
very nature of life itself. As the life sciences have become increasingly specialized in recent decades,
big-picture perspectives on how it is all supposed to hang together are needed more than ever. The
purpose of this course is to supply you with the tools you need to gain that broader perspective. It will
teach you to think critically about the ways in which biology is done affect the answers it provides, and
how those answers sit alongside our broader views about the world and our place in it.
We will explore a range of fascinating puzzles lying at the very heart of biology, and we will examine the
theoretical role(s) played by fundamental biological concepts, such as gene, organism, mechanism,
function, adaptation, selection, and species. Some of the foundational questions we will address in this
course include: Is biology an autonomous science or is it reducible to physics and chemistry? Does
biology have laws? How do biologists explain the phenomena they study? What role do genes play in
development? Is there such a thing as a biological essence? Are organisms very complicated machines
or are they something different altogether? Anyone interested in getting past the textbook answers to
think deeply about how biology works and what it tells us about ourselves will enjoy this course.

Course Information from the University Catalog