In memory of Richard Levins: Dr. Levins had accepted our invitation to teleconference at the workshop. We also had plans to conduct a taped interview prior to the workshop at Harvard. As we reel from the shock of his sudden passing on the 19th of January, we mourn the lost opportunity to engage with a bright and fertile mind and the loss of a great man. We will carry on this workshop in his memory and to continue his legacy.
30 Years After The Dialectical Biologist
The workshop will start with a dedication to Richard Levins and a memorial of his work, his life, and his legacy. Amongst the questions we will discuss...
Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin’s The Dialectical Biologist, published in 1985, characterizes problems in biology that stem from dichotomies of part vs. whole, organism vs. environment, structure vs. process. It calls for an an acute awareness of the socio-political context and implications of science and criticizes the “Cartesian reduction” of complex phenomena into homogenous parts and context.
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To what extent do internal vs. external and part vs. whole dichotomies persist in the developmental, ecological, evolutionary sciences?
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What are some conceptual frameworks that go beyond these dichotomies and what are their implications for research and medicine?
The newly established field of Ecological Developmental Biology (eco-devo) brings to the foreground the context of biological development. It focuses on the inductive role of environment and the plasticity and niche construction of organisms. The findings in eco-devo are currently contributing to a conceptual shift in evolutionary biology against the gene-based Modern Synthesis to an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. What about the conceptualization of the organism-environment entanglement itself?
More perplexing in eco-devo is the role one specific environmental factor plays in development, immunity, and health— the microbes that persist “inside” multicellular hosts. Microbiota communities form a patchwork of interacting ecosystems at epithelial surfaces topologically external to the host. Yet the majority of these surfaces are “internalized” (lungs, guts, vaginal tract, etc.) and consist of rich mucosal structures, tissues, and microbial biofilms constructed by both microbes and host.
Ecological
Developmental Biology
Host-Microbe
Symbiosis
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What can eco-devo tell us about organism/environment dichotomies and their problems?
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Do the explosion of examples reveal co-construction of “organism” and “environment”?
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Does the host-microbiota relation require us to rethink both “inward-looking” part vs. whole and “outward-looking” organism vs. environment dichotomies?
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Is host-microbiota symbiosis a good example of “co-construction”?
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Do microbiota and host constitute a single heterogeneous developmental process and structure?