Off year ISH workshop: Synthesizing Autonomy and New Mechanism in the Philosophy of Biology www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/tradi...

Traditional Off-year ISHPSSB Workshop Proposal - Dialectical Systems

September 11th-13th 2026 University of Oslo (building and room number to be announced) A Novel “Third Way:” Synthesizing Autonomy and New Mechanism in the Philosophy of Biology 1) Workshop Coordinator...

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The dialectical underpinnings of multilevel selection Evolution isn’t flat: new levels arise through conflict and then reshape the very dynamics that brought them into being

The Dialectics of Multi-Level Selection in Evolutionary Biology - Dialectical Systems

Introduction Dialectical thinking in biology has famously been put forward by the eponymous book of Levins and Lewontin (1985). Much of the book was dedicated to the interpenetration between organisms...

dialecticalsystems.eu

CFP: Dialectics and Life (Marxism & Sciences, Issue 10) Main topics: organism–environment coupling, critical 4E cognition, social metabolism, dialectical approaches to modeling. Abstracts due 1 June 2026 👉 www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/cfp-d...

CFP: Dialectics and Life — Marxism & Sciences, Issue 10 (Autumn 2026) - Dialectical Systems

The journal Marxism & Sciences has announced a special issue on Dialectics and Life, calling for abstracts that explore the crucial relation between dialectical thinking and the complex entanglement o...

dialecticalsystems.eu

Extending the evolutionary synthesis isn’t enough Rasmus Haukedal's new book calls for a truly dialectical biology: from autopoiesis to sympoiesis, from efficient causes to enablement, and an innovative take on plasticity, canalisation & habit. dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Enaction meets dialectics! New paper out on how sensorimotor agency scales up to social normativity link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back - Topoi

This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is tha...

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Materiality isn’t a backdrop to cognition, but one of its central conditions The upcoming workshop “Habits, Tools, and Material Environments” examines how cognition is socially distributed, ecologically embedded, and enacted through material engagement dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...

40 years after The Dialectical Biologist, Richard Lewontin’s legacy still challenges how we think about life A new report revisits his intertwining of philosophy, biology, and Marxism—and how organisms are subjects of their own evolution www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

Very nice upcoming workshop at the Center for Philosophical Psychology (University of Antwerp) on how radical embodiment unfolds in complex, “wild” real-world environments. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/works...

Marx as a philosophical biologist? Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

➡️New article out⬅️ @leonardobich.bsky.social and @lauramenatti.bsky.social argue that health is not about balance or stability, but about adapting and transforming in response to changing circumstances — the capacity for adaptive change. link.springer.com/journal/13752

How did regulation and agency arise before genes? Shirt-Ediss et al. model evolving protocell ecologies with the Araudia platform—showing how simple metabolic systems can “learn” to adapt to changing environments dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New Paper (2025): Modelling the prebiotic origins of regulation and agency in evolving protocell ecologies - Dialectical Systems

How could the first living systems learn to regulate themselves before the emergence of genes? In their new paper, Ben Shirt-Ediss, Arián Ferrero-Fernández, Daniele De Martino, Leonardo Bich, Álvaro M...

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How does life emerge from nonlife? New special issue of the Royal Transactions brings together leading thinkers on the origins of life—where chemistry meets information, and evolution unfolds through the “adjacent possible.” dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

📖 New Book Out Alvaro Moreno & Juli Peretó explore the major transitions in biological agency—from origins of life to metazoans—showing how agency drives the evolution of biological complexity www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin A hybrid conference bringing together voices old and new to revisit how The Dialectical Biologist still resonates, and reinvigorates, contemporary biology www.dialecticalsystems.eu/events/diale...

Dialectics meets the enactive approach! Join us for Dialectics and the Embodied Mind 📍 Univ. of Luxembourg | Sept 22–23 dialecticalsystems.eu/events/inter...

Inspiring work by Denis Walsh on organism/ environment dialectic, along side @jonothingeb.bsky.social and Stuart Newman ! #ISHPSSB2025 is such a treat !

Since its beginnings, the enactive approach has shown how autonomy is scaffolded across biological, sensorimotor, and social dimensions. This new video interview with Ezequiel Di Paolo tells the story in an accessible way: youtube.com/watch?v=y4Dz...

Originals | Ezequiel Di Paolo: Linguistic Bodies and Sensorimotor Agency

YouTube video by Originals

youtube.com

Integrating dialectical insights into cognitive science has driven advances in the enactive approach. This new paper opens a dialogue between enaction and Marxism, highlighting labor as a form of an ecological and distributed cognition link.springer.com/article/10.1...

An enactive account of labor - Mind & Society

This paper aims to build a theoretical bridge between the Marxist and enactive traditions by focusing on the concept of labor. While labor represents a central component of human experience, it remain...

link.springer.com

Today we celebrate the new edition of Varela’s Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) from MIT Press, with a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo & Evan Thompson, reconnecting Varela's legacy in cognitive science to his theoretical biology dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

New edition of Principles of Biological Autonomy - Dialectical Systems

Today, we celebrate the new publication of Principles of Biological Autonomy (1979) by MIT Press, now accompanied by a new critical apparatus by Ezequiel Di Paolo and Evan Thompson.Varela’s ideas cont...

dialecticalsystems.eu

Embodied & enactive approaches aren’t just about individual cognition — they’re about society. A new Mind & Society special issue brings enactivism into conversation with ethics, social theory & political philosophy. www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Really excited to read the reprint of Varela’s Biological Autonomy annotated by @evanthompson.bsky.social. I really want to offer a special topics course focusing on it in an upcoming semester.

Collin Lucken & Elmo Feiten use the enactive concept of participatory sense-making to ground public science engagement, showing how core ideas from embodied cognition can scale beyond motor coordination to illuminate social cognition in practice www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Leveraging participatory sense-making and public engagement with science for AI democratization

Our paper explores new potentials for productive dialogue between public engagement with science (PEWS) and radical embodied cognitive science (RECS).…

sciencedirect.com

Henry Potter and @wiringthebrain.bsky.social challenge reductive views in neuroscience by introducing richer, temporally extended notions of causality and arguing to re-center cognition and the organism as genuine causal agents in behavior onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience

The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The audio recording of our fantastic event with Kevin J. Mitchell and Anil Seth, FREE AGENTS: Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?, is now up on our website and Youtube Channel. Go take a listen now! www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVr-... @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social

The media circus on the slightly modified wolf mixed with the nonsensical hype of de-extinction only highlights the need to greatly shift how we talk about genes and genetic "information" in popular discourse. Oyama's groundbreaking book and Lewontin's prescient forward should be a starting point.

Information and data will never deliver creativity — Life, information, and the search for meaning New piece over at @iai.tv In which I quote Colwyn Trevarthen and David Bowie. iai.tv/articles/inf...

Information and data will never deliver creativity | Hanne De Jaegher

iai.tv

𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝗲𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 Neuroscience & Philosophy Salon: Join our discussion with @wiringthebrain.bsky.social Apr 11 at noon EST USA time. Here's the paper to get the discussion going: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... Everyone welcome but register ->

Beyond Mechanism—Extending Our Concepts of Causation in Neuroscience

The search for neural mechanisms of behaviour often relies on a synchronic, driving view of causation, where neural activity drives more neural activity, which eventually drives behaviour. The real c....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Adaptivity is central to life, yet conceptually homeless. While adaptation is tied to selection, adaptivity is an ongoing organismal process—rooted in metabolism, not just evolutionary causation www.dialecticalsystems.eu/contribution...

The Philosophy of Adaptivity - Dialectical Systems

At the core of life is adaptivity, the organismal process of adjusting to ever-changing conditions. But despite its centrality, adaptivity is a surprisingly lonely concept. Its most immediate lexical ...

dialecticalsystems.eu

Happy to share that our SI in Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society B was accepted 😎 Hybrid Agencies - Crossing Borders between Biological and Artificial Worlds Co-Edited with Shaun Gallagher and Takashi Ikegami We have a fantastic line up of contributions coming up soon !

Can natural selection shape the ability to evolve? New study shows bacteria evolving mutations that speed up adaptation—suggesting mutations are not purely random but can be biased toward adaptive outcomes www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...