The overall goal of this workshop is to address the riddle of organismal agency through the lenses of philosophy, history, and the biological sciences. It aims to (i) clarify the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of organismal agency; (ii) contextualize this problem in the history of philosophy and biology in fruitful new directions; and (iii) delve into the consequences of embracing organismal agency for the study of development and evolution, its formal integration into biological theories, and translatability into scientific practice.

This workshop is organized by the ROTO research group (‘The Return of the Organism in the Biosciences: Theoretical, Historical and Social Dimensions’) at Ruhr University Bochum. For more information regarding the group and our research, please visit https://rotorub.wordpress.com/