- Université Ca’Foscari, Venise
- Histoire et philosophie des sciences
- Page institutionnelle / Institutional webpage : https://www.unive.it/data/persone/22329571
Présentation / Presentation
Charles T. Wolfe is an Assistant Professor (ricercatore) in the Dipartimento di Filosofia e Beni Culturali, Università Ca’Foscari, Venezia. He works primarily in history and philosophy of the early modern life sciences, with a particular interest in materialism and vitalism. He is the author of Materialism: A Historico-Philosophical Introduction (2016), La philosophie de la biologie: une histoire du vitalisme (2019) and Lire le matérialisme (2020), and has edited / coedited volumes including Monsters and Philosophy (2005), The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge (2010), Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life-Science (2013), Brain Theory (2014), Physique de l’esprit (2018), and Philosophy of Biology before Biology (2019). Among his current projects are the Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences (edited w. D. Jalobeanu) and edited volumes on mechanism, life and mind in early modern natural philosophy and contemporary vitalism. He is co-editor of the book series ‘History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences’ (Springer). Papers available at: https://unive.academia.edu/CharlesWolfe.
À propos du hasard / About chance (publications)
- PhD, “Locating Mind in the Causal World: Locke, Collins and Enlightened Determinism” (Boston University 2007)
- “Determinism/Spinozism in the Radical Enlightenment: the cases of Anthony Collins and Denis Diderot”, IRECS (International Review of Eighteenth-Century Studies) n° 1 (2007)
- “Un colpo di dadi non cancelleràmai il caso: il determinismo lucreziano in Locke”, in G. Mormino, V. Morfino & F. del Lucchese, dir., Lucrezio e la modernità, Naples, Bibliopolis, 2010
- “Chance between holism and reductionism: tensions in the conceptualisation of Life”, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology n° 110 (2012)
- “Suspension du désir ou suspension du déterminisme ? Le compatibilisme de Locke”, in Pascal Charbonnat & François Pépin, dir., Le déterminisme. Entre sciences et philosophie, n° 2 (2012)
- “Diderot et l’approche déterministe de l’esprit : un autre déterminisme ?”, Dix-huitième siècle vol. 46 (2014)
perspectives sur le hasard / on chance
Je m’intéresse au déterminisme comme concept, sous plusieurs formes : physique, affective, sociale, organismique. À savoir qu’il n’y a pas “un seul” déterminisme, par exemple la vision commune, laplacienne d’une sorte de prévisibilité mathématique absolue, qui tend à se confondre avec le fatalisme. Diderot par exemple est fasciné par les déterminations affectives et corporelles qui font que nous croyons agir librement, mais sommes en fait déterminés – sans que cela annule ou “gomme” nos spécificités. Si Juliette aime Paul, son acte ou son choix est peut-être conditionné par divers facteurs qu’elle ignore, mais cela ne signifie pas que son amour – ses états mentaux, ses affects, ses tendances, ses appétits – est identique à celui qu’éprouve Horst pour Klaus, ou aux affects de Juliette dix ans plus tard. Cela touche (on le voit par la dimension sociale et affective) à un certain spinozisme, visible dans la pensée contemporaine chez Frédéric Lordon, mais aussi à la question du “neurodéterminisme”, donc des rapports cerveau-pensée. Cet intérêt prend dans mon travail des formes épistémologiques (contexte scientifique des 17e-18e siècles) mais aussi philosophiques tout court.
The juxtaposition of chance with the more familiar pair of holism and reductionism in biology may at first sight seem rather surprising. Chance is both an ancient philosophical problem, as addressed – quite differently – by Aristotle, Lucretius or Diderot (Gigandet 2002, Wolfe 2010c, Pépin, n.d.); a concept closely linked to the emergence of ‘modern’ biology, from Darwin to the study of genetic mutations; today it is discussed in a new way on both the experimental and theoretical planes, particularly in the more manipulable form of stochasticity: Kupiec et al. 2009, Kupiec 2010). Holism is a term that always carries with it a residual dimension of mystery, referring initially to a set of positions that goes back to Aristotle and Hegel, then – most relevantly for our topic here – to a position in theoretical biology inspired by general systems theory (Smuts 1926/1999, Ash 1995); in a more existential sense, it is also associated with the ‘organicism’ of Kurt Goldstein (Goldstein 1934/1995). Holism has also been revived more recently in analytic philosophy with Robert Brandom and John McDowell (for recent analyses of holism in metaphysics, philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language see Esfeld 1999 and Block 1998). But for our purposes ‘holism’ is a certain type of claim about how specifically living beings – organisms overall, but particularly live ones – should be considered as wholes, even if there is no rigorous, clear-cut distinction or relation between holism, systems theory and specifically organismic claims about the uniqueness of living beings… [Read more]
