Daniel S. Brooks: Scale Ranges - The Variety of Matter’s Forms, and Levels of Organization as Local Maxima

Originally applied to preserve a materialist worldview that extends beyond physics and chemistry, the notion of levels of organization is one of the most recognizable ideas in biology. Although sometimes (erroneously) used interchangeably, the relationship between ‘levels’ and ‘scale’ presents an exciting (and relatively unexplored) area in theoretical biology and the history and philosophy of science. Here, Brooks will address this lacuna by clarifying how the two notions can inform and enhance one another. To this effect, he links up the idea of levels of organization with the insight that putative levels (e.g., cells, tissue, and ecosystems) exhibit distributed clustering that extends across scale ranges rather than particular part-whole demarcations. This ‘local maxima’ approach suggests that levels should be seen as a spectrum, where attributing discrete identity (as a particular type of, e.g., cell, tissue, ecosystem) is distributed across distinct and moderately localized or regional resolutions in time and space.

Daniel S. Brooks is a professor for theoretical philosophy at the University of Wuppertal. His research interests span the history and philosophy of the life sciences (particularly developmental biology, ecology, and neuroscience), concept usage in science, naturalized epistemology, methodology in philosophy of science, and existentialism. He has held multiple research fellowships, including at the Konrad Lorenz Institute, Ruhr-University Bochum, and the University of Minnesota. His current project focuses on a systematic investigation and analysis of the concept of levels of organization in contemporary and historical biological thought. His edited volume on levels, titled Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences and co-edited with James DiFrisco and William C. Wimsatt, appeared in 2021 at MIT Press. More info can be found at www.danielsbrooks.com.

Full video: https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/daniel-s-brooks/