Alexandre Guay - Individuals Across the Sciences

Edited by ALEXANDRE GUAY
AND THOMAS PRADEU

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Individuals across the sciences / [edited by] Alexandre Guay [and] Thomas Pradeu.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 9780199382514 (hardcover : alk. paper)eISBN 97801904938131. Individuality.2. Individual differences.I. Guay, Alexandre, joint editor.

BF697.I637 2015

111dc23

2015003229

Alexandre Guay and Thomas Pradeu

Stphane Chauvier

Alexander Bird

E. J. Lowe

Dcio Krause and Jonas R. Becker Arenhart

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Marc Ereshefsky and Makmiller Pedroso

Melinda Bonnie Fagan

Cdric Paternotte

Simon Saunders

James Ladyman

David Glick

Paavo Pylkknen, Basil J. Hiley, and Ilkka Pttiniemi

Christina Conroy

Matteo Morganti

Matthew H. Haber

Alexandre Guay and Thomas Pradeu

Ruey-Lin Chen

Steven French

We would like to thank all the contributors to this volume, who, in addition to writing their own chapter in time, commented (often very extensively) on chapters written by others. We also thank the many colleagues who, without contributing directly to this volume, reviewed one or several chapters, contributing decisively to the overall quality of this collective work: Guido Bacciagaluppi, Giovanni Boniolo, Adam Caulton, Ellen Clarke, David Crawford, John Dupr, Michael Esfeld, Adam Ferner, James Griesemer, Evelyn Houliston, Philippe Huneman, Maximilian Kistler, Lucie Laplane, Tim Lewens, Cynthia Macdonald, Maureen OMalley, Kerry McKenzie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Julian Reiss, Stphanie Ruphy, Claudine Tiercelin, David Wallace.

Special thanks to Alexander Bird, who so kindly agreed to write a very nice and touching presentation of Jonathan Loweundoubtedly one of the most brilliant and innovative metaphysicians of our time.

Finally, our gratitude goes to Peter Ohlin and Lucy Randall, of Oxford University Press, who, as always, have been extremely efficient in dealing with our questions and doubts.

Jonas R. Becker Arenhart is Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. His work concerns mainly logical and metaphysical aspects of quantum mechanics.

Alexander Bird is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. His work deals in particular with metaphysics and epistemology of science and medicine. He is the author of many papers and books, including Natures Metaphysics: Laws and Properties (Oxford University Press, 2007), where he argued for a dispositional essentialist account of natural properties and necessitarianism about the laws of nature.

Stphane Chauvier is Professor of Philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne University. His works in metaphysics deals mainly with the relation between language, thought, and reality. He is the author of various papers on the transition from linguistic reference to existence. His latest book in the field (Le Sens du Possible, Vrin, 2010) won the Montyon Prize 2011 of the French Academy.

Ruey-Lin Chen is a Philosophy of Science Professor at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan. His current research interest is in the philosophy of science across physical, biological, and experimental cases. He is the author of four books in history and philosophy of science in Chinese. He also published some articles in English.

Christina Conroy is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky. She is currently working on a single-world interpretation of Everettian quantum mechanics. She is the author of The Relative Facts Interpretation and Everetts Note Added in Proof in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43: 112120, 2012.

Marc Ereshefsky is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. His research focus includes the nature of species, scientific classification, biological taxonomy, natural kinds, individuality, historicity, and homology.

Melinda Bonnie Fagan is Sterling McMurrin Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Utah. Her research focuses on experimental practice in biology, with particular emphasis on explanation and modeling. She is the author of Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) as well as over twenty-five articles and book chapters on topics in philosophy of science and biology.

Steven French is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds and co-editor in chief of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. He is coauthor, with Dcio Krause of Identity in Physics (Oxford University Press, 2006) and recently published The Structure of the World (Oxford University Press, 2014).

David Glick is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester, United States. His work focuses on structuralism and holism in metaphysics and physics. He received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Arizona. His dissertation, Structures and Objects: A Defense of Structural Realism, was supervised by Richard Healey.

Peter Godfrey-Smith is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He works in the philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind, and is the author of four books, including Theory and Reality (2003), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (2009), and Philosophy of Biology (2014).

Alexandre Guay is Professor of Philosophy of Natural Sciences and Analytical Philosophy at the Universit catholique de Louvain, Belgium. Most of his research focuses on ontological puzzles in physics. He is the editor in chief of Lato Sensu: Revue de la Socit de Philosophie des Sciences.

Matthew H. Haber is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah, with an adjunct appointment in the Center for Quantitative Biology. His work primarily deals with topics in biological systematics, taxonomy, classification, and phylogenetics.