Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy

Dr. Christopher Donohue is Historian of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health.  He established the institutional archives at the NHGRI and currently manages the History of Genomics Program, which promotes the study of genomics and its integration into the 20th century life sciences. He has conducted over sixty oral history interviews which cover all aspects of modern biology and genetics. He is the editor of a special issue on “Genomics and the Human Genome Project” for the Journal of the History of Biology. He is an associate editor of the Ideology and Politics Journal, which publishes peer-reviewed scholarly work on post-Soviet ideas and politics.  Dr. Donohue focuses on the history of population genetics as well as conceptual issues in contemporary biological science. His interests range from conceptual appropriation in the biological and the social sciences to the reception of various scientific ideologies (Darwinism, vitalism, materialism) in central and south-eastern Europe.  Charles T. Wolfe is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Université de Toulouse-2 Jean-Jaurès. He works primarily in history and philosophy of the early modern life sciences, with a particular interest in materialism and vitalism. He is the author of Materialism: A Historico-Philosophical Introduction (2016), La philosophie de la biologie: une histoire du vitalisme (2019) and Lire le matérialisme (2020), and has edited or coedited volumes on monsters, brains, empiricism, biology, mechanism and vitalism, including most recently (w. D. Jalobeanu) the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (2019-2022) and (w. J. Symons, in progress) The History and Philosophy of Materialism. He is co-editor of the book series ‘History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences’ (Springer). Papers available at [https://univ-tlse2.academia.edu/CharlesWolfe]

• 1. Brooke Holmes (Princeton): The Two-Soul Problem: Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen.- 2.       Hannah Landecker: Metabolic Materialism.- 3. Christopher Donohue (NIH): “Concerning the Tenacious Adherence of Animal Spirit to Matter".- 4. Crystal Hall (Bowdoin College) and Erik L. Peterson (University of Alabama): Who were the vitalists and where did they go?.- 5. Jane Maienschein (ASU): Early Twentieth Century Accounts of the Individuality of Organized Whole Organisms.-  6. Bohang Chen (Ghent): Hans Driesch and vitalism: the standpoint of logical empiricism.- 7. Mazviita Chirimuuta (Pittsburgh): The Critical Difference between Holism and Vitalism in Cassirer’s Philosophy of Science.- 8. Tano S. Posteraro (Penn State): Vitalism and the Problem of Individuation: Another Look at Bergson’s Élan Vital.- 9. Sebastjan Vörös (Ljubljana): Is there not a truth of vitalism? Transcendental vitalism in light of Goldstein, Merleau-Ponty, and Varela.- 10. Arantza Exteberria (IAS, San Sebastian) and Charles T. Wolfe (Ghent): Canguilhem and the logic of life.- 11. Phillip Honenberger (UNLV): All Knowing is Orientation: Marjorie Grene's Ecological Epistemology.- 12. Alvaro Moreno (IAS, San Sebastian): What is life? The historical dimension of biological organization.- 13.  Cécilia Bognon-Küss (Louvain-La Neuve): The concept of metabolism, biological identity and the challenges from microbiome research.