Introduction: on Inheritance and Subjectivity
Part I: Theoretical Inheritances
Chapter 1: Toward a Hermeneutic Approach to Biological
Discourses
Chapter 2: The Structure of Sight: Foucault’s Early Analysis of the
Life Sciences
Part II: Ecological Inheritances
Chapter 3: Subjectivity in the Extended Inheritance Theory of
Evolution
Chapter 4: Genetic Transformation into Structure
Chapter 5: The Space of Life: Reflections on the Ontological
Consequences of the Secondary Inheritance Theory of Evolution
Part III: Microbial Inheritances
Chapter 6: Microbes Colonizing Humanism
Chapter 7: Horizontal Gene Transfer: On the Ontological
Consequences of the Horizontal Inheritance of DNA
Chapter 8: Being One and Many: Microbial Symbiosis and
Inheritance
Chapter 9: A Concrescence of Inheritances Vs. the
Metaphysically-Present Individual
Bibliography
Russell Winslow teaches philosophy at St. John's College, Santa Fe.
Organism and Environment can best be described as a philosophical
interpretation of recent developments in the life sciences. Using
insights from postmodern philosophers, especially Gadamer, Winslow
(philosophy, St, John's College) highlights the ontological
prejudices behind discourses in evolutionary biology. He uncovers a
particular assumption, that of the autonomous, individually
existing subject at the heart of the familiar theory of adaptation
by (vertical) genetic inheritance from parent to offspring. This
"humanist" prejudice, or, to use Heidegger's term, "metaphysics of
presence," is now giving way to an ecological ontology consisting
of horizontal modes of genetic inheritance that render the humanist
individual no longer feasible. This book is useful as an insightful
application of hermeneutics, but it will also help those in the
philosophy of biology reflect further on developments in their
field…. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers,
faculty.
*CHOICE*
The question of “Life” has never been more pressing than in the
current context of climate change, species loss, and what is now
called the Anthropocene: all of which force upon us the need to
rethink questions of community and ethical responsibility beyond
the purview of homo sapiens. Referencing new work on the
microbiome, developmental systems theory, and epigenetics (just to
name a few), Russell Winslow’s book is an immensely readable and
broadly informed contribution to thinking these questions anew by
moving beyond the neo-Darwinian reductionist paradigm. A
welcome—and overdue—contribution to the growing literature on
“posthumanism.”
*Cary Wolfe, Director, 3CT: Center for Critical and Cultural
Theory, Rice University; author of What Is Posthumanism? (2010) and
Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame
(2013).*
Winslow’s philosophical study of the discourse of modern and
contemporary biology is lucid, measured, precise, and refreshing.
Along with incisive discussions of figures ranging from Heidegger
and Canguilhem to Foucault and Simondon, he introduces a
hermeneutic frame derived from Gadamer that effectively delineates
and distinguishes among a series of ontological prejudices that
“subtend” evolutionary and ecological ideas from Darwin to the
present moment. Organism and Environment provides persuasive
arguments for the significant contributions of ecological trends in
recent biology to ongoing debates over the cultural meanings of
posthumanism.
*Bruce Clarke, professor of Literature and Science, Texas Tech
University, USA; co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Literature
and Science*
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