Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

Author’s Introduction

1. The question, "What is an organism?," formerly considered as essential in biology, has now been increasingly replaced by a larger question, "What is a biological individual?"
2. On the grounds that
   1. Individuation is theory-dependent, and
   2. Physiology does not offer a theory,
   biologists and philosophers of biology have claimed that it is the theory of evolution by natural selection that tells us what counts as a biological individual.
3. Here I show that one physiological field, immunology, offers a theory that makes possible a biological individuation based on physiological grounds. I give a new answer to the question of the individuation of an organism by linking together the evolutionary and the immunological approaches to biological individuation.