Organic individuality has been an important problem in evolutionary and developmental biology for over one hundred years. Theories of evolution usually take for granted that its subjects are individuals (whose characteristics vary), while developmental biology tries to explain how individuals come to have their most characteristic properties. But what does it mean to be an `individual,` and how are individuals in biology--individual organisms, cells, or DNA molecules--different from individual entities in, say, chemistry, quantum mechanics, or sociology? The PI will use the Fifth International Congress of Systemic and Evolutionary Biology, to be held in Budapest, Hungary, August 17-24, 1996, as an occasion to gather a group of philosophers working on this theme. They would prepare papers for presentation at the conference and meet among themselves and with others present to initiate inquiry into the nature of organic individualism.
