lullius Lecture
John Dupré
John Dupré is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), where he has been director of the Egenis research center until 2022. Previously, he was a professor at Stanford, and Birkbeck College, University of London.
Working from a naturalistic perspective in philosophy of science, his research focuses on the study of the metaphysical implications of biology. In particular, he has introduced the thesis of “promiscuous realism” about natural kinds and, more recently, about the primacy of processes over substances as ultimate constituents of reality.
His most notable works include The Disorder of Things and Processes of Life. In the first one, he introduces his famous theory of promiscuous realism, presenting in detail the reasons why classifications of natural genres are always oriented by human ends and, therefore, we must accept as many classifications of the natural world as are offered as long as they prove useful for some human purpose. Likewise, he argues that scientific evidence shows that neither reductionism nor determinism is possible, and that therefore reality must be thought of to a certain extent as “disordered.” In the second one, after studying various fields of contemporary biology in detail, he argues that the biological world is a world in constant flux and that, therefore, reality is in the first place changeable and not static. This gives rise to the formulation of his process ontology, which regards change as primitive and goes against substance ontologies that conceive stability as primitive and change as derivative.
Selected Bibliography
The disorder of things: Metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science
Harvard University Press - 1993
The order presupposed by scientific unity is expressed in the classical philosophical doctrines of essentialism, materialist reductionism, and determinism. Employing examples from biology, that most "disordered" of sciences, Dupre subjects each of these doctrines to detailed and devastating criticism. He also identifies the shortcomings of contemporary approaches to scientific disunity, such as constructivism and extreme empiricism. He argues that we should adopt a "moderate realism" consistent with pluralistic science. Dupre's proposal for a "promiscuous realism" acknowledges the existence of a fundamentally disordered world, in which different projects or perspectives may reveal distinct, somewhat isolated, but nevertheless perfectly real domains of partial order.
Processes of life: Essays in the philosophy of biology
Oxford University Press - 2012
John Dupré explores recent revolutionary developments in biology and considers their relevance for our understanding of human nature and human society. Epigenetics and related areas of molecular biology have eroded the exceptional status of the gene and presented the genome as fully interactive with the rest of the cell. Developmental systems theory provides a space for a vision of evolution that takes full account of the fundamental importance of developmental processes.
Dupré shows the importance of microbiology for a proper understanding of the living world, and reveals how it subverts such basic biological assumptions as the organisation of biological kinds on a branching tree of life, and the simple traditional conception of the biological organism. These topics are considered in the context of a view of science as realistically grounded in the natural order, but at the same time as pluralistic and inextricably integrated within a social and normative context.
The volume includes a section that recapitulates and expands some of the author's general views on science; a section addressing a range of topics in biology, including the significance of genomics, the nature of the organism and the current status of evolutionary theory; and a section exploring some implications of contemporary biology for humans, for example on the reality or unreality of human races, and the plasticity of human nature.