There is an underlying assumption in the social sciences that consciousness and social life
are ultimately classical physical/material phenomena. In this ground-breaking book …

This paper argues that biological organisation can be legitimately conceived of as an
intrinsically teleological causal regime. The core of the argument consists in establishing a …

This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in contemporary biology,
namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental …

The present work is a strongly revised version of my dissertation, which was accepted at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2011. When writing this work I have received enormous …

This book addresses the rise of biology as a unified science in Germany at the turn of the
nineteenth century. It does so by reconstructing the history of the notion of “vital force” from …

We propose a new method for the history of ideas that has none of the shortcomings so often
ascribed to this approach. We call this method the model approach to the history of ideas …

This paper argues that a central explanatory role for the concept of Umwelt in theoretical
biology is to be found in developmental biology, in particular in the effort to understand …

Kant's conception of organisms as natural purposes raises a challenge to the adequacy of
mechanistic explanation in biology. Certain features of organisms appear to be inexplicable …

Timothy Lenoir launched the historical study of German life science at the end of the 18th
century with the claim that JF Blumenbach's approach was shaped by his reception of the …

Angesichts der zunehmenden Zerstörung der Natur durch den Menschen und der
technischen Fortschritte in den Biowissenschaften hat die Frage nach dem Verhältnis des …