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Title: Mr. Job Title: Egenis Research Student Tel: 01392 269142 Fax: 01392 264676 Email: djn205@exeter.ac.uk Building: Byrne House Room Number: FF10
My academic trajectory has been guided by a desire to understand life. After graduating with the Spanish and International Baccalaureates I left my home city of Madrid to embark on a four-year undergraduate masters degree in biochemistry, molecular, and cellular biology at the University of Bath. In 2003 I moved to the United States to conduct a 12-month graduate-level biomedical research project at the University of Iowa on the molecular basis of muscular dystrophy. Upon my return to Bath, I spent a further six months in the lab, this time at the Centre for Extremophile Research, where I cloned, expressed, and purified an enzyme complex extracted from a salt-loving archaeum. In 2005 I began a second Masters degree in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds, where I discovered the fascinating subject that is the philosophy of biology. Twelve months later, having written a dissertation defending the search for general laws in biology, I graduated with distinction and came to the University of Exeter with a three-year departmental scholarship to work on my PhD – a historical and philosophical examination of the nature of the organism – which I hope to complete by the summer of 2010.
PhD Project Summary
I am examining the philosophical foundations of our biological understanding of the nature of living organisms. My point of departure is the increasingly apparent failure of contemporary biology to ‘explain away’ the organism by focusing exclusively on sub-organismal entities on the one hand (like genes, via genetics and molecular biology), and supra-organismal entities on the other (like species, via evolution and ecology). Taking the organism as a whole as my object of study, I have retraced in my research the turbulent history of the controversy between mechanistic and vitalistic conceptions of life, and have come to the realization that the underlying conflict between the two traditions remains very much alive in contemporary philosophical discussions of organisms. Specifically, I have identified three basic points of contention between the two doctrines – one conceptual, one theoretical, and one methodological – and I am proceeding in my thesis to examine each of them. The conceptual dispute refers to the question of whether or not the organism can be effectively understood as constituting a (very complex) machine. The theoretical dispute refers to the problematic status of organismic purposiveness and the question of whether or not it provides a sufficient basis for defending an ontological demarcation between living and nonliving systems. Finally, the methodological dispute relates to the conflict between reductionistic and holistic approaches in biological research, and to the seemingly intractable dilemma of how to make sense of living organisms without destroying them in the process. Out of these discussions, I am developing a contemporary organicist philosophy of biology.
Supervisory Team
• Principal Supervisor: Prof. Lenny Moss
• Secondary Supervisor: Prof. John Dupré
Teaching Experience
• 2008-2009 - Teaching Assistant for 'Sex & Death: Introduction to Philosophy of Biology'
• 2007-2008 - Teaching Assistant for 'Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'
• 2006-2007 - Teaching Assistant for 'Knowledge and Reality 2'
Academic Activities
• In collaboration with Staffan Mueller-Wille, Maureen O'Malley, John Dupré, and Pierre-Olivier Méthot I am organizing the two-day workshop ‘Life of the Cell: Philosophy and History of Cell Research’ at Egenis
• In the summer of 2008, I was invited to participate in the first European Science & Society Summer School (E4S), "Deconstructing and Reconstructing Life: From Classification to Design", at the University of Heidelberg
• In 2007-2008 I ran, together with Pierre-Olivier Méthot, Egenis's History and Philosophy of Biology Journal Club, which is open to both staff and students, and meets fortnightly during term time
• In 2006-2007, I assisted Lenny Moss in the organisation of the 2-day pre-ISHPSSB workshop 'Formalizing Purpose?: On the Pas de Deux between Formal and Final Cause through the History of Biology', which brought together Ron Amundson, David Depew, Philippe Huneman, John Zammito, and others. • In 2006-2007, I helped establish Egenis’s Postgraduate Biophilosophy Reading Group, which met fortnightly
• In 2005-2006, I was the Student Representative of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds
• History and Philosophy of Biology
• General Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Medicine
• Science and Religion
Recent Presentations
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