The Revitalizing Biophilosophy conference series is an initiative dedicated to building biophilosophy into a transdisciplinary international movement. The first of two planned conferences, titled Revitalizing Biophilosophy, will be held online on July 10–11, 2025. This virtual gathering will bring together a diverse range of scholars to explore biophilosophy’s historical foundations, contemporary developments, and future possibilities. The second conference, to be held in Summer 2026, will be a hybrid online and in-person track as part of the International Whitehead Conference at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
The 2025 conference will serve as an essential step toward consolidating a global biophilosophical movement. Our primary aim is to create an alternative to the prevailing reductionist tendencies of mainstream Anglo-American Philosophy of Biology, which often restricts the study of life to materialist, mechanistic, and narrowly computational frameworks. Instead, Revitalizing Biophilosophy will highlight perspectives that take life’s intrinsic creativity, agency, interiority, and value seriously.
The Need for a Revitalization of Biophilosophy
Biophilosophy is not a new field. Throughout the 20th century, numerous thinkers in Europe, North America, and beyond developed frameworks that diverged from the materialist and mechanistic assumptions of mainstream biology. These George Canguilhem, Hans Jonas, Jakob von Uexküll, Gilbert Simondon, Raymond Ruyer, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, and many others. Their contributions remain underappreciated in dominant discourse yet offer essential insights into the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical dimensions of life.
Beyond Western traditions, non-Western approaches—Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, and Indigenous conceptions of life—offer profound insights into biological organization, evolution, and the living world’s ethical and ontological significance. These perspectives share affinities with process-relational approaches to biology, emphasizing interdependence, dynamic emergence, and the participatory nature of life. Our goal is to facilitate dialogue across these traditions, forging a truly Global Biophilosophy.
Conference Themes
These two conferences aim to address three central questions:
What is Biophilosophy?
Mapping the field and clarifying its relationship to other traditions, including process philosophy, phenomenology, biosemiotics, feminist philosophy, and historical-epistemological approaches.
Key Biophilosophical Concepts
Exploring ideas such as organism theory, ontogeny, organismic memory, organismic interiority, feminist approaches, and alternative models of evolution and development.
How Does Biophilosophy Differ from Mainstream Philosophy of Biology?
Expanding the metaphysical, epistemological, and methodological frameworks beyond the constraints of scientific materialism.
We intend for this first conference to create a foundation upon which the 2026 hybrid online/in-person conference can build. The second conference, which will take place at the International Whitehead Conference, will explore both theoretical and practical dimensions of biophilosophy, including its implications for environmental ethics, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the future of biological sciences.
Building a Long-Term Movement
Beyond these two conferences, our long-term vision is to establish an International Biophilosophical Society that fosters collaboration among scholars and scientists dedicated to rethinking life’s meaning and significance. We also plan to launch a Biophilosophy Book Series to publish works that engage in this renewed biophilosophical inquiry. The proceedings of these conferences will form the basis of a comprehensive anthology, to be published by a reputable academic press.
We invite all those interested in the future of biophilosophy to join us in this effort. By bridging insights from diverse philosophical traditions and the life sciences, we aim to create a more expansive, integrative, and ethically responsible approach to understanding life in all its complexity.
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Conference Speakers
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Wm. Andrew Schwartz
Dr. Wm. Andrew Schwartz is Executive Director of the Center for Process Studies and Associate Professor of Process Studies & Comparative Theology at Claremont School of Theology, as well as Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of the Institute for Ecological Civilization. Dr. Schwartz earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Claremont Graduate University. His academic interests are broad, and include Comparative Religious Philosophies, Process Thought, Ecology, Education, and more. His recent work has been focused on high-impact philosophy and the role of big ideas in the transition toward ecological civilization. As Executive Director, Andrew has overall strategic and operational responsibility for CPS, including development and implementation of the CPS mission, programs, and strategic vision.