Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #ISHPSSB19
Most recents (14)
James DiFrisco reports on our collaboration on mechanistic explanation and process in evo-devo. #ISHPSSB19
DiFrisco: static gene regulatory networks dominate as explanation for the structure of the genotype-phenotype map. But static network graphs do not constitute causal-mechanistic explanations. #ISHPSSB19
DiFrisco: prominent examples of network-based explanations are provided by the work of Eric Davidson and colleagues, or Günter Wagner’s genetic theory of homology, based on character identity networks (ChINs). #ISHPSSB19
Oscillating between sessions this morning: now listening to Matteo Mossio and why biological parts are not machines. #ISHPSSB19
Mossio: “a machine is a system that exists because it produces work resulting from the properties of its parts and their interactions.” #ISHPSSB19
Mossio: “machines are purposive systems endowed with internal functional differentiation.” #ISHPSSB19
Creative evolution and natural selection: @EtheHerring talks about Darwinian and anti-Darwinian Bergsonians. #ISHPSSB19
@EtheHerring Bergson: “Intelligence is characterised by a natural incomprehension of life.” (Creative Evolution, 1907)
@EtheHerring Herring: Bergson saw both mechanistic and teleological views of evolution as flawed. Evolution as a truly unpredictable/creative process. Natural selection not sufficient for creativity. #ISHPSSB19
Eve Roberts asks whether phonemics is the epistemic superstar of biological research. I’m intrigued by her talk title. Curious to learn what this will be about. #ISHPSSB19
Roberts: “phonemics” as the study of entire phenotypes of systems. Hard to define phenotype and its relation to the genotype (see Mahner & Kary, 1997 who define the genotype as part of the phenotype!). #ISHPSSB19
At the end of the talk, I’m still not sure I understand what an “epistemic superstar” is… 🧐😕 #ISHPSSB19
François Papale aims to redefine the units of selection as networks of interactions. #ISHPSSB19
Papale: gene regulatory networks, holobionts, or evolutionary populations are examples of relevant networks of interactions. #ISHPSSB19
Papale classifies networks of interactions according to their degree of functional integration regarding reproduction and persistence. Units of selection are networks of interactions with high degrees of integration. #ISHPSSB19
Networks & evolution, pt 2: Eric Bapteste. Network thinking to expand our scope of evolutionary explanations. #ISHPSSB19
Eric Bapteste: microbial evolution – complex communities with irreversible metabolic dependencies and widespread lateral gene transfer indicated reticulate patterns of mosaic evolution. #ISHPSSB19
Eric Bapteste: host-microbe interactions also follow reticulate evolutionary patterns. #ISHPSSB19
Good morning #ISHPSSB19! Today: “Networks and the ontology of the theory of evolution.”
First up: W. Ford Doolittle, ITSNTS. #ISHPSSB19 
“Peter Godfrey Smith is the paradigm of a serious Darwinist.” #ISHPSSB19
Organismic agency for desert after a very productive lunch with my fellow @PTPBio editors. #ISHPSSB19
@PTPBio Hugh Desmond: agential explanation – valid? indispensable? or just a far-fetched metaphor? #ISHPSSB19
Denis Walsh: agency – future-determining, teleological, and normative. #ISHPSSB19
Biology in crisis! Second morning session with Carlos Sonnenschein, Ana Soto, Arnaud Pocheville, and Maël Montévil. #ISHPSSB19
Note: “SMT capitulation” in 2008–2018 😉
Ana Soto: the role of theories in biology is to provide organising principles and to construct objectivity. Also: theory determines the proper observables; the choice of observables is major theoretical commitment. #ISHPSSB19
Entertaining myself this morning with Scott Gilbert’s “John Tyler Bonner and the holobiont life cycle.” #ISHPSSB19
“Animals don’t have life cycles, they *are* life cycles.” John T. Bonner, 1965
Co-development: individual animals do not preexist their mutualistic symbiotic interactions with microbes, which are an integral part of embryogenesis. #ISHPSSB19
Processes Pt. 2 #ISHPSSB19: Ontology.
1. Will Morgan: a critical analysis of process ontology. Basic premise: process ontology is not saying anything new over (four-dimensionalist) substantivist views.
2. Daniel Molter synthesises substantivist and process ontology through materially continuous genidenticals.
@Emily 1. David Price Brunet: why we should stop worrying and learn to love the machine metaphor...
@Emily “You can’t use the same machine twice.”
Digesting lunch with “Extending developmental approaches to evolution: chance, plasticity, and environmental stress in evolvability.” #ISHPSSB19
1. Laura Nuño de la Rosa presents a propensity-based interpretation of how variability leads to evolvability: propensities to generate adaptive variation are structure through the g-p map and evolve. #evodevo
2. Cristina Villegas argues that development fits into a causal theory of evolution through developmental channeling, which creates a dappled (irregularly accessible) structure of morphospace. #evodevo
First session this morning at #ISHPSSB19: an interesting discussion, moderated by Karen Kastenhofer & @nikivermeulen on engagement of (social) scientists with systems biology and the interplay between funding and research priorities.
Recent waves of scientific fashions have driven funding priorities from systems biology to synthetic biology and now to AI-based approaches. This trend points away from understanding living systems to control and prediction without understanding. /1
There is also a recent trend to integrate responsible research and innovation #RRI research into scientific projects. Is this a good thing? /2
