Category: Uncategorized

PROCESS ONTOLOGY. “Our argument in this essay has been that process ontology is far more concordant with the understanding of the living world provided by contemporary biology than its substantialist rival. The more we learn about life, the more necessary a process perspective becomes. This is particularly the case with regard to the increasing realization of the omnipresence of symbiosis, which directly challenges deeply entrenched substantialist assumptions about the living world. Thus the empirical findings of biology are inexorably driving us towards processualism, even if it is less intuitive than substantialism.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

THE TRICKY QUESTION OF TIME. “But, although it might seem more intuitive to regard organisms as things than as processes, the situation quickly begins to reverse when we start giving due consideration to time.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

NO DOG COLLAR. “We believe that being explicit about the metaphysical stance one takes to be right for biology is crucial if we are to prevent what Whitehead described as the ‘canalization of thought and observation within predetermined limits, based upon inadequate metaphysical assumptions dogmatically assumed’. Our aim in this essay has been to defend the metaphysical thesis that a process ontology is the right ontology for the living world.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

PATHOLOGICAL PROCESS. “To attribute pathogenicity to an individual microbe is to commit an indefensible act of abstraction, as it implies ignoring the complex processual context that makes it possible. A microbe is not a thing or a substance, and pathogenicity is not an unchanging property that the microbe carries with it like an essence; it is rather a process, and as such it is to be expected that its characteristics will be found to be transient, context-dependent, historically contingent, and ever subject to ecological and evolutionary changes.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

NEW THINKING. “The above considerations strongly suggest that there are no definite criteria by which we can unequivocally classify a particular microbe as a pathogen.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

MULTIPLE CONTEXTUAL ROLES. “Conversely, microbes that are usually pathogenic can end up protecting their host against more virulent parasites. Virulence itself, which refers to the degree of damage a pathogen is capable of inflicting on its host, is not a permanent property of the pathogen; it is arguably not even a property of the pathogen, but rather the outcome of a specific kind of interaction between the pathogen and its host.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

SYMBIOTIC SHIFT. “The traditional question ‘Is this microbe a pathogen?’ is gradually giving way to the question ‘Under what ecological conditions is this microbe likely to become a pathogen?’. This shift is partly being prompted by the discovery that microbes thought to be engaged in commensal or mutualistic relations with their host can become pathogenic (i.e. parasitic) as a result of changes in the host environment (this is the case for the microbes that make up the normal microbiota of the human gut, for instance).’ https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

TURBULENCE. “In inhomogeneous mixing, one imagines the dry air saturating through the rapid evaporation of droplets on the edge of an air parcel, before the dry air that is being mixed throughout the parcel has time to mix throughout the parcel. In the homogeneous mixing limit unsaturated air can be mixed throughout the parcel before the droplets have time to adjust.” http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/teaching/skript-5.pdf View in LinkedIn

CONTEXTUAL PATHOGENS. “Pathogenicity may not be an intrinsic property of a microbe at all, but rather, as Méthot and Alizon (2015) argue, a contingent property afforded by the particular ecological context in which the microbe finds itself and by the complex and ever changing symbiotic relationship it maintains with its host.” https://lnkd.in/dE_ZD9q View in LinkedIn

"TURBULENT MIXING dilutes the concentration of droplets, thereby reducing the competition for the available vapor, and enhancing the growth rate of favored droplets. Thermodynamically the mixing of sub-saturated air requires net evaporation, either by reducing the number of droplets in the saturated air after the mixing, or by reducing the size of the droplets." (Inhomogeneous mixing). http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/stevensbjorn/teaching/skript-5.pdf View in LinkedIn