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Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. II. About the Weak Individuality of Organisms and Ecosystems

  • Thematic Issue Article: Ecosystems or Organisms?
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Abstract

Following a previous elaboration of the concept of weak individuality and some examples of its instances in ecology and biology, the article focuses on general features of the concept, arguing that in any ontological field individuals are understood on the basis of our knowledge of interactions, through the application of these general formulas for extracting individuals from interactions. Then, the specificities of the individuality in the sense of this weak concept are examined in ecology; I conclude by addressing the differences between ecosystems and organisms as they appear in the viewpoint of such concept.

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Notes

  1. Actually, I use “concept of weak individuality” and “weak concept of individuality” interchangeably. Even though one could object that they are two different things (e.g., “a communist concept of society” versus “a concept of communist society”), here the differences are not so important, especially because we are not assuming any concept of individuality; so I can just stipulate that “weak individual” is the object of a “weak concept of individuality.”

  2. In the same way, if we use these schemes to individuate cultural entities, we may for example use Dawkinsian memes as entities, assuming many things regarding the entities likely to produce, encode, or transmit memes, but these assumptions as such would not entitle someone to question the fact that there are cultural individuals.

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Acknowledgments

I warmly thank Minus van Baalen, Sébastien Dutreuil, Arnaud Pocheville, and Livio Riboli-Sasco for insightful comments and critiques on the previous versions of the manuscripts, as well as precious suggestions; along with John Davis, John Dupré, Alexandre Guay, Thomas Pradeu, and the other participants of the workshops (“Stabeco,” December 2010, Paris; “Individuals Across the Sciences,” November 2013, Paris) where early versions of this work have been presented.

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  1. Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (IHPST), CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne, Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

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Correspondence to Philippe Huneman.

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This paper forms a two-part article with DOI 10.1007/s13752-014-0192-9.

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Huneman, P. Individuality as a Theoretical Scheme. II. About the Weak Individuality of Organisms and Ecosystems. Biol Theory 9, 374–381 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-014-0193-8

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