CfP: What counts as environment in biology and medicine? Historical, philosophical and sociological perspectives
We are calling for
contributions to a special issue of Studies in History of Philosophy of
Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and
Biomedical Sciences titled "What counts as environment
in biology and medicine? Historical, philosophical and sociological
perspectives".
The special issue
builds on the panel "The concept of environment in biology: Historical,
philosophical and sociological perspectives" that won the award for the
best interdisciplinary panel at the 2019 ISHPSSB
conference. We are seeking to complement the existing set of papers
with new contributions across humanities (especially history and
philosophy) and social sciences.
The "environment" is
much invoked in contemporary biosciences and medicine, from the
considerations of environmental impact to the frequently and prominently
appearing notions such as early-life and food
environment. Yet for all the visibility, the meaning of the (ever
expanding) term "environment" is rarely explained in detail. This lack
of clarity is important, as it leads to ambiguities about the boundaries
of environments. What counts as environment in
one field may be understood as organism, or body, in another. For
example, the microbiome is simultaneously understood as a part of the
organism (constituting together a developmental or evolutionary unit)
and its environment (e.g. in faecal microbiota transplantation).
Secondly, this lack of conceptual clarity can contribute to poor
communication and impossibility of collaboration between fields. While
historians and social scientists have begun to look seriously into the
concept of the environment, they have mostly been
content to acknowledge the multiplicity of meanings, without trying to
sketch a genealogy, or classification of these "environments", including
the epistemological and methodological challenges of each meaning.
Against this
background, this special issue aims at integrating historical and social
with philosophical studies on the environment. We invite contributions
that address the following two topics and sets
of questions:
1)
Conceptual foundations of the environment in the biosciences: What
are the historical conditions of past conceptions of the environment and
what are consequences of present interpretations? Which disciplinary or
experimental settings favour specific views
of the environment and why? Examples of these views include: collective
or individual, homogeneous or heterogeneous, invariant or
spatio-temporally flexible, selective or constructed, passive or
actively generative, experienced or "acted on", and external
or internal environments. Furthermore, which recent trends in the
bioscences, such as those towards organism-environment reciprocity,
constructed environments, and individual environments, offer new
perspectives on older philosophical debates, for example
on externalism or the niche concept? Should the organism-environment
relation be re-evaluated in the context of notions such as extended
organism or holobiont? These and related questions may be addressed from
a philosophical angle that analyzes the opportunities
and challenges of different views on the environment in biological
practice, ranging from experimental setups to explanatory standards. We
explicitly welcome discussion topics that concern central past meanings
of the term, such as mileux environnants (Lamarck),
conditions of existence (Darwin), Umwelt (Uexkuell), constructed
environment (Lewontin), and others.
2)
Biomedical perspectives on the environment: Biomedicine is
exceptionally rich with regard to the range of environments considered
while simultaneously poor with explicit definitions. We invite
contributions that will consider what is in what is out: what
kinds of resources, disciplinary traditions and philosophical concepts
are taken into account when constructing the notion of the environment.
Essays may analyze biomedical understandings of notions such as neutral
environment versus healthy and harmful, individual
versus collective, or internal versus external. In the latter case,
they may track the changing boundary between internal and external
environments. As a next step essays may inquire about the challenges
and consequences of each of these concepts: where does
the responsibility for the success of preventative or therapeutic
intervention reside? What kind of politics forms the foundations of
these concepts, and what sort of policy-making strategies do they lead
to? We welcome essays studying fields and disciplines
known for their considerations of environment, such as tropical
medicine, environmental epidemiology, and environmental epigenetics, but
we also encourage contributions investigating other areas, taking
comparative or longue durée
approaches, and engaging with current debates, for example concerning microbiome research or personalized medicine.
We will invite full contributions by 1 March 2020 and the deadline for full papers will be 31 October 2020.
Full papers will have to comply with the general Guide for Authors of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C (
https://www.elsevier.com/