Overview
Addresses several key issues in the biological study of death, capturing their genealogy
Offers mutually informative accounts of physiology and evolutionary biology
Provides insight into the way our concept of death may clash with some traditional philosophical ideas
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Table of contents (15 chapters)
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How Do We Die? Proximate Causes of Death and the Rise of Experimental Physiology
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The Ultimate Causes: Why Do We—and All Others Creatures—Die? And What Should the Answer Do to Philosophy?
Keywords
About this book
This book addresses several key issues in the biological study of death with the intent of capturing their genealogy, the assumptions and presuppositions they make, and the way that they open specific new research avenues. The book is divided into two sections: the first considers physiology and the second evolutionary biology. In the first part, Huneman reconstructs a conceptual genealogy of experimental physiology based on an in-depth analysis of Bichat's investigations of death processes. In the second part he explains that biologists in the late 1950s put forth a research framework that evolutionarily accounts for death in terms of either an effect of the weakness of natural selection or a by-product of natural selection for early reproduction. He illustrates how the biology of death is a central field and that studying it provides insight into the way that the epistemic structure of this knowledge has been constituted, persists until now, and may conflict with some traditional philosophical ideas.
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Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Philippe Huneman is Research Director at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques at the Université Paris, France. He is also an affiliated professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, and he has published extensively on the philosophy of evolutionary biology and ecology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Death
Book Subtitle: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Biology
Authors: Philippe Huneman
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14417-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-14416-5Published: 15 February 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-14419-6Published: 15 February 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-14417-2Published: 14 February 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 542
Number of Illustrations: 23 b/w illustrations
Topics: Philosophy of Man, Evolutionary Biology