Research Projects

Environment Concepts in the Sciences

(FWO-funded project 1263327N)

Environments have a marked prominence across diverse scientific disciplines. Researchers employ various construals of ‘environment’ in their theories, models, and explanations, which exert a substantial, often unacknowledged influence on their research. Yet, despite their importance, environments have received surprisingly little systematic attention in the philosophy of science. How do scientists conceptualize environments? Are there shared understandings or common conceptual foundations across the sciences? How do scientists measure and model environments in scientific settings? This project addresses these questions by exploring environment concepts in the sciences. By surveying different scientific disciplines, I aim to identify common ground and points of divergence, articulating the first projectable taxonomy of environment concepts. Expanding this focus, I advance the novel proposal of understanding environment concepts as ‘partition concepts.’ Furthermore, I analyze how environments have been modeled conceptually and mathematically in science, critically examining existing practices and offering a theoretical framework to improve measurement practices and their epistemological grounding. Finally, this project will clarify how scientific conceptions of ‘environments’ relate to other spheres, such as environmental concerns of societal relevance, and how scientists can work toward better models and measurements of environments to face the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Artificial Life, Self-Organization, and Active Matter (with Lendert Gelens, Bart Smeets, Sylvia Wenmackers, and Grant Ramsey)

Combining philosophical analysis with experimental and computational approaches, we investigate how lifelike structures and behaviors emerge from active-matter systems—such as cell-free frog-egg extracts—with a focus on self-organization and environmental (e.g., spatial) constraints. We also examine disciplinary links between synthetic biology and artificial life research, and evaluate the epistemic roles, assumptions, and modeling desiderata of a range of models across ‘soft’ and ‘wet’ artificial life.

Niche Construction and the Causal Structure of Evolutionary Theory (with Grant Ramsey)

We are interested in understanding how niche construction—the process by which organisms change their environment or their relations with their environment—can affect both adaptive and non-adaptive evolution, acts as a modulator of other evolutionary causes, and, more generally, how it fits into the causal structure of evolutionary theory.

Environmental Ethics Meets Philosophy of Biology (with Matthew Sims)

We intend to create more bridges between environmental ethics and the philosophy of biology. Specifically, we want to explore how theoretical and policy-oriented debates about intrinsic value could be re-framed by considering non-human organisms as bona fide agents capable of shaping their environments in pursuance of goals of their own.

Scientific Representation: The Case of Model Organisms (with Guido I. Prieto)

In this project, we mobilize and refine the DEKI account of scientific representation to clarify the representational status of ‘model organisms’ and thus build a more robust epistemology of model organism-based research in the life sciences.

History of Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century (with Stefan Reiners-Selbach, Jan Baedke, Charles Pence, Alexander Böhm, Vera Straetmanns, and Daniel Nicholson)

Through a Digital Humanities approach, we are making strides to reconstruct the history of theoretical biology in the twentieth century. We are trying to uncover the changing landscape of actors, debates and developments in theoretical biology that explain the shift from a conceptual-philosophical field to a mathematical modeling-driven discipline.

Rediscovering Conrad Hal Waddington’s Legacies in Biology and Beyond (with Francisco Vergara-Silva)

To mark Conrad Hal Waddington’s 50th death anniversary in 2025, we organized the 43rd Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research. This interdisciplinary gathering re-assessed Waddington’s wide-ranging legacies across the sciences, the arts, and the humanities. We are currently preparing an edited collection following these themes.

Fostering Metaphilosophy of Science

As a long-term goal, I am committed to promoting international efforts to put ‘Metaphilosophy of Science’—the research area that considers and advances open-ended, second-order reflections on the concepts, assumptions, aims, and methods that underpin philosophy of science itself—on the agenda of philosophers of science. While many philosophers of science have engaged in metaphilosophical reflections to some extent, a cohesive and integrated field of discourse, akin to what exists in other branches of philosophy like meta-ethics, metaepistemology, and metametaphysics, is hitherto lacking. This could provide a platform for addressing disagreements among contrasting stances in general philosophy of science and the philosophies of the special sciences, understanding the limitations of particular approaches for answering specific questions, and channeling productive discussions about the relationship between philosophy and science, as well as the role of philosophy of science in the disciplinary landscape of the 21st century.