This bibliography gathers publications over many years from a variety of researchers exploring topics of agency, directionality, and function (among others) with a special emphasis on CASP members. It began with work from teams within the initial Agency, Directionality and Function project and continues to be populated with papers and articles from diverse researchers looking to further develop and expand ways of working interdisciplinarily on the complex theme of teleology.
Included in the bibliography are entries for publications and books that many scholars involved in the Agency, Directionality and Function project recommended as foundational texts in their field of study. We welcome suggestions for additions to the bibliography from CASP members.
Mechanism, Vitalism and Organicism
Allen, G.E. (2005). “Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century biology: the importance of historical context.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36(2):261–283.
Amundson, R. and G.V. Lauder (1994). "Function without purpose: the uses of causal role function in evolutionary biology." Biology and Philosophy 9(4): 443–470.
Beckner, M. (1968).The Biological Way of Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press.
Berryman, S. (2009). The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Bertalanffy, L. (1952). Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Bowler, P.J. (2001). Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early Twentieth Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Breitenbach, A. (2006). “Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37(4): 694–711.
Churchill, F.B. (1969). “From machine-theory to entelechy: two studies in developmental teleology.” Journal of the History of Biology 2:165–185.
Craver, C.F. (2013). “Functions and mechanisms: a perspectivalist view.” In Functions: selection and mechanisms. Edited by P. Huneman. Spring Dordrecht, 133–158.
Des Chene, D. (2001). Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes. New York: Cornell University.
Drack, M. (2009). “Ludwig Bertalanffy’s early system approach.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science: https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.992.
Dresow, M. (2020). “Re-forming morphology: two attempts to rehabilitate the problem of form in the first half of the twentieth century.” Journal of the History of Biology 53: 231–248.
Driesch, H. (1908). The Science and Philosophy of Organism, Volume 1. London: Adam and Charles Black.
El-Hani, C. N., & Reis, C. R. M. (2021). Research Strategies and Value Outlooks in Scientific Practices: For an Organicist Thinking and a Pluralist Methodology in the Biological Sciences. Philosophy World Democracy.
Esposito, M. (2014). Romantic Biology, 1890–1945. New York: Routledge.
Ghiselin, M.T. (1994). “Darwin’s language may seem teleological, but his thinking was another matter.” Biology and Philosophy 9:489–493.
Lenoir, T. (1982). The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lewens, T. (2004). Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
Loeb, J. (1912). The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lovejoy, A. (1911). “The meaning of vitalism.” Science 33:610–614.
Mensch, J. (2013). Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Newman, L. (1991). “Unmasking Descartes’s case for the bête machine doctrine.” Canadian Journal for Philosophy 31:389–425.
Nicholson, D. (2019). “Is the cell really a machine?” Journal of Theoretical Biology 477:108–126.
Nicholson, D. and R. Gawne. (2015). “Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism but organicism: what the philosophy of biology was.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37:345–381.
Normandin, S. and C.T. Wolfe. (2013). Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Springer Dordrecht.