Death: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Biology

Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Philosophical Riddle of Death, from a Biological Point of View
	1.1 Philosophy and the Oblivion of Biology
	1.2 Philosophical and Biological Issues
	1.3 What Is Death and What Are Its Criteria?
	1.4 Gradients of Death, Vital Processes, and Aging
	1.5 The Question “Why Death?”
	1.6 Overview of the Biological Facts of Death
	1.7 This Book’s Endeavor
	1.8 Who Could Read This Book?
	1.9 The Book’s Structure
	References
Part I: How Do We Die? Proximate Causes of Death and the Rise of Experimental Physiology
	Chapter 2: How Late-Eighteenth-Century Physiologists Understood the Living World and Their Task
		2.1 Physiology and Mechanism
			2.1.1 The Mechanistic Conception
			2.1.2 Georg-Ernest Stahl’s Vitalism: Opposition to a Mechanist Worldview
			2.1.3 Physiology and Classical Natural Philosophy
		2.2 Vitalism
			2.2.1 Haller and Bordeu
			2.2.2 The “Animal Economy”
		2.3 Bichat’s Dilemma
		References
	Chapter 3: Bichat’s Theories and Their Genealogy
		3.1 The Vitalist Definition of Life
		3.2 Devising Divisions
		3.3 Properties and Tissues
		3.4 Bichat’s Anatomical Method
		3.5 Bichat’s Difficulties
		References
	Chapter 4: Physiology in Bichat’s Physiological Researches on Life and Death
		4.1 The First Part: “Researches on Life”
			4.1.1 The Particularities of the Animal and Organic Lives
			4.1.2 Habits, Society, Passions
			4.1.3 Animal Life and Its Development: Physiology as a Part of Natural History of Man
		4.2 Bichat as Anthropologist
		References
	Chapter 5: Bichat’s Experimental Physiology in the Recherches (Part 2): Death as an Epistemic Facilitator
		5.1 Conceptions of Death and Sensibility to Death: End of a Dualism
		5.2 Life and Experiments on Death
		5.3 Sequence-Schemata
		5.4 Organs and Functions
		5.5 Interpreting the “Recherches sur la mort”: A New Understanding of the Living
			5.5.1 Physiology, Anatomy, Pathological Anatomy
			5.5.2 Concepts and Institutions
		5.6 The Specificity of the Living According to the Nascent Experimental Physiology
		References
	Chapter 6: Life and Death in Experimental Physiology After Bichat
		6.1 François Magendie and Bichat
		6.2 Claude Bernard’s Critiques
			6.2.1 Critique of Anatomical-Clinical Medicine
			6.2.2 The milieu intérieur and the Critique of Vitalism
		6.3 The Novelty of General Physiology According to Claude Bernard
		6.4 Life and Death in Claude Bernard’s Work
			6.4.1 The Experimental Approach
			6.4.2 The Characterization of Life and Its Relationship to Death
		6.5 The Two Pathways
			6.5.1 Creation, Evolution’s Directive
			6.5.2 Bernard’s Hesitations and the Conflict Between Morphology and Physiology
		6.6 Conclusion
		References
Part II: The Ultimate Causes: Why Do We—and All Others Creatures—Die? And What Should the Answer Do to Philosophy?
	Chapter 7: A Providentialist Metaphysics and the Traditional Economics of Death: Mortality and Individuality
		7.1 The Providentialist Metaphysics
		7.2 Providentialist Metaphysics, Individuality, and Death in Biology: Darwin and Weismann
			7.2.1 Biology, Geosciences, and Chemistry: Using Providentialist Schemes of Death
			7.2.2 Darwinizing the Scheme: Weismann, Soma, Germen, and Death
			7.2.3 Death, Individuals, and the Good of the Group
			7.2.4 Facing Difficulties of All Sorts
		References
	Chapter 8: The Evolutionary Synthesis’ View of Death: Peter Medawar, George C. Williams, and the Riddles of Senescence
		8.1 A Biologist on Selection and What Apparently Resists Its “Paramount Power”
		8.2 Why Would We Have Sex and Die?
		8.3 Mutation Accumulation and Antagonistic Pleiotropy: Framing the Evolutionary Conception
		8.4 Enters Indirect Natural Selection: “Antagonistic Pleiotropy”
		8.5 Ecology, Evolution, and Physiology: The Novel Territory of the Question About Biological Death
		8.6 Conclusion: Charting the Shadow of Selection
		References
	Chapter 9: Epistemology of Death (1): Goals and Evidence
		9.1 What Are the Objects of Enquiry? The Equivocations of “Aging” and “Death”
			9.1.1 Senescence
			9.1.2 Aging, Death, and the Contrast Classes
			9.1.3 Lifespans and Life History
		9.2 How to Gather Evidence About Death and Senescence?
			9.2.1 Humans and Curves
			9.2.2 Producing Evidence About Death: Comparisons
				Comparing Senescence Patterns
				Comparisons at the Genomic Level
		References
	Chapter 10: Epistemology of Death (2): Experiments, Tests and Mechanisms
		10.1 Producing Evidence About Death: Two Levels of Laboratory Experiments (Dietary Restrictions and Genomics)
			10.1.1 Diet
			10.1.2 Experiments and Genomics
				Insulin Pathway and daf-2
				“Longevity Genes” as an Object of Study
			10.1.3 Experiments on Stem Cells and the Role of Intestinal Epithelium
		10.2 Selection Experiments on Model Organisms and in the Wild
		10.3 Mechanisms, Evolutionary Processes, Causes: The Evidential Structure of Evolutionary Theories of Death and Senescence and Their Epistemic Issues
			10.3.1 Death and Irrationality: A Parallel
			10.3.2 Diversity of Aging Mechanisms and the Rival Evolutionary Hypotheses
			10.3.3 Testing Competing Hypotheses: The Conundrum
			10.3.4 Undecidability?
			10.3.5 Epistemic Opacity of Death and Senescence
				Epistemic Opacity, Senescence, Causal Contributions, and the FTNS
				Provisory Epistemological Conclusions
		10.4 A Somewhat Alternative Theory: Disposable Soma Theory
			10.4.1 Introducing DST
			10.4.2 DST: Trading Reproduction vs Repair vs Growth
			10.4.3 DST and Other Evolutionary Accounts: An Attempt at Characterization
				Lumping AP and DST (and Still the Epistemic Gap)
				Multiple Perspectives on the Status of DST
		10.5 Conclusion. The Pluralistic Picture
			10.5.1 Theory Families, Explanatory Pluralism, and Singular Developments
			10.5.2 Being Pluralist About Explanatory Pluralism
		References
	Chapter 11: Ontology (1): The Modern Economics of Death and Its Trade-Offs
		11.1 Trade-Offs and Life History
		11.2 The Diversity of the Trade-Offs Underpinning Senescence
			11.2.1 Trade-Offs, According to Williams
			11.2.2 Trade-Offs in the Disposable Soma Theory
		11.3 Multiplying and Combining the Types of Trade-Offs
		11.4 What Is Traded? Currencies, Stochasticity, and Limits of Trade-Offs
			11.4.1 Multiple Currencies, Multiple Weights: Introducing Stochasticity and Constraints
			11.4.2 The Commensurability Issue: Fitness Trade-Offs and an Incursion into Community Ecology
		11.5 Fitness as a General Equivalent? The Roots of Trade-Offs and Some Epistemic Undecidabilities
			11.5.1 Trade-Offs, Fitness, and Time
			11.5.2 Senescence and Fitness: Contemplating the Plurality of Discounting Rates
			11.5.3 The Logics of Trade-Offs: The Limits of an Economics of Death
		References
	Chapter 12: Ontology (2) Death Programs and Their Discontents
		12.1 The Disputed Question: Is There a Death Program?
		12.2 What Is at Stake?
		12.3 The No-Program Consensus
		12.4 Aging Programs, Reloaded (1): Unraveling Apoptosis
		12.5 Aging Programs, Reloaded (2). Yeast, Bacteria, and Their Suicides
			12.5.1 Aging Bacteria
			12.5.2 Suicide Bacteria
		12.6 Epistemological Considerations
		References
	Chapter 13: Ontology (3): The Case for Programs: Altruistic Suicide, Quasi-Programs and Smurfs
		13.1 Investigating Programmed Cell Death (PCD) in Unicellulars: Talk of Cell Senescence and Suicide
		13.2 Altruistic Programs Versus Quasi Programs
		13.3 Becoming Smurf: The Discontinuous View of Aging and Its Consequences
		13.4 Inquiring About the Possibility of Aging Programs: Altruistic Suicide, Kin Selection, Population Structures
		References
	Chapter 14: Death Is a Social Issue
		14.1 Social Structures
		14.2 Social Interactions
		14.3 Discounting Rates: Temporal and Social
		14.4 Coda: The Parts and the Whole: Darwinian Style
			14.4.1 Parts and Wholes: Kant and Darwin and Cell Death
			14.4.2 Back to Black
		References
	Chapter 15: Conclusion
		References
References
Author Index
Subject Index