http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
inheritance and subjectivity in the life sciences
Organism and Environment examins the way the contemporary life sciences are heralding a revolution of the most basic philosophical concepts of the Western world. Analyzing recent research in microbiology and evolution theory, Russell Winslow argues that these discourses are adding their voices to a growing chorus thath is announcing a disruption, if not an end, to the understanding of the order of the world articulated in humanism. What does it mean to be a living substance? Are there such things as living individuals? How are living beings free? The discourses of microbiology, the medical sciences and evolution theory are revealing a living organism that escapes the limited frame that Enlightenment humanism has traditionally used to answer these (and other) ontological questions. Appealing to the theoretical lenses provided by Michel Foucault, Hans Georg Gadamer and Gilles Deleuze, Organism and Environment offers an interpretation of the way the contemporary life sciences are giving articulation to a posthuman ontological order.
Introduction: on inheritance and subjectivity -- Toward a hermeneutic approach to biological discourses -- The structure of sight: Foucault's early analysis of the life sciences -- Subjectivity in the extended inheritance theory of evolution -- Genetic transformation into structure -- The space of life: reflections on the ontological consequences of the secondary inheritance theory of evolution -- Microbes colonizing humanism -- Horizontal gene transfer: on the ontological consequences of the horizontal inheritance of DNA -- Being one and many: microbial symbiosis and inheritance -- A concrescence of inheritances vs. the metaphysically-present individual.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-213) and index.