PHIL 694: Special Topics in Contemporary Philosophy
PHIL 694-002: Philosophy of Biology
(Fall 2025)
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM W
Horizon Hall 5001
Section Information for Fall 2025
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.
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Course Information from the University Catalog
Credits: 3
Enrollment limited to students with a class of Advanced to Candidacy, Graduate, Junior Plus, Non-Degree or Senior Plus.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Non-Degree or Undergraduate level students.
Students in a Non-Degree Undergraduate degree may not enroll.
This course is graded on the Graduate Regular scale.
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