What is the environment, and in particular the environment that can have an impact on our health? What is its nature? How do we conceptualise it? The environment, in the broadest sense of the term, is at the heart of some of society's most pressing challenges. It raises issues that can only be tackled by combining scientific research with the views of the general public. There is a growing awareness among the latter, not only of the impact that the environment, as we have transformed it, can have on our health, but also of the way in which our habits and experiences throughout our lives are changing us and may contribute to the development of certain diseases. The EnviroParCiPhil project raises the question of participatory research methodologies that could be used on a large scale to change the definition of the (spatio-temporal) boundaries of the environment as a determinant of our states of health and disease. The aim is to establish collaboration between scientists and citizens in order to co-develop a methodology that can be replicated on a large scale to gain a better understanding of 'health-environment' issues. The aim is to listen to the views and questions of members of civil society in order to broaden the scope of research in the biomedical sciences and the humanities and social sciences into the environmental determinants of disease, and thus to strengthen the relevance of this research from a purely epistemic point of view but also at the service of citizens directly concerned by "exposures" and the public health policies that can protect them from these exposures. The object of the co-construction is therefore to co-develop a method for amending the concept of environment in health within the framework of cohorts, and to enable cohort members to become more involved in developing future research questions and analysis methodologies that will concern other epidemiology projects. This methodology therefore has an iterative dimension, with the concepts of environments expressed also being studied in philosophy of science on subsequent cohorts. The aim of this pilot project is to set a precedent and encourage researchers to use, in health-environment studies, research methodologies that mobilise participation as a conceptually and pragmatically enriching tool in interdisciplinary research, for example with the co-design of intervention studies. At the end of the project, a colloquium will bring together researchers from the fields concerned to assess the results of the project and to study the feasibility of using the methodologies generated in future research.

As far the physical world is concerned, the standard realist attitude which conceives of objects as existing independently of our representations of them might be (prima facie) plausible: if things go well, we represent physical objects in the way we do because they are so-and-so. In contrast, as we want to argue, in the mathematical world the situation is reversed: if things go well, mathematical objects are so-and-so because we represent them as we do. This does not mean that mathematics could not be objective: mathematical representations might be subject to constraints that impose objectivity on what they constitute. If this is right, in order to understand the nature of mathematical objects we should first understand how mathematical representations work. In the words of Kreisel’s famous dictum: “the problem is not the existence of mathematical objects but the objectivity of mathematical statements” (Dummett 1978, p. xxxviii). The problem we tackle concerns the philosophical question of clarifying the role of representations in mathematical reasoning and proofs and the way they contribute to mathematical ontology and understanding. This is a fresh inquiry concerning a classical problem in philosophy of mathematics connecting understanding to proofs and to the way the ontology of mathematic is conceived. But our starting point is neither classical proof theory nor classical metaphysics. We are rather looking at the problem by opening the door to the practical turn in science. In our perspective the question is then neither to find a topic-neutral formalization of mathematical reasoning, nor to offer a new argument for the existence of mathematical objects. We rather wonder how appropriate domains of mathematical (abstract) objects are constituted, by appealing to different sorts of representations, and how appropriate reasoning on them are licensed. Accordingly, we plan to analyse: (i) in which sense in mathematical practice relevant stipulations determine objects by appealing to appropriate representations; (ii) in what sense inferential rigor conceived in a contentual (informal) perspective can depend on these stipulations; (iii) in what sense it is possible to characterize nevertheless (by interlinking philosophical studies with scientific investigations) informal provability by formal means, which allows using logic and mathematics as a tool for epistemology. We also contrast our approach with classical foundational approaches of mathematics and logic, like classical Platonism and Nominalism, which both share an “existential attitude” facing mathematical objects (they both take as crucial the question whether they exist or do not exist, though giving opposite answers) and consider mathematical reasoning as topic-invariant.

This interdisciplinary project aims at elaborating an original framework to individuate ecosystems by combining conceptual, theoretical and modelling approaches. Ecosystems are not as bounded as typical biological individuals (i.e. organisms) but, rather, their boundaries appear fuzzy and porous. This is a problem for theorizing as such, but conservation and management should also rely on well-grounded criteria to delimit ecosystems and the functions of their components. We submit that ecosystems’ individuation goes hand in hand with their stability and resilience. The project explores how ecosystems, which show highly improbable regimes of order, maintain themselves in the biosphere by constraining the flow of matter and energy. Our working hypothesis is twofold: first, constraints are exerted by biodiversity items and abiotic factors, which can be understood as functional parts of the system; second, functional constraints realize a regime of mutual dependence, which provides a criterion to draw the boundaries of the overall ecosystem. The organization of constraints is therefore the theoretical principle that, at the same time, accounts for the stability of ecosystems, individuate them in space and time, and identify their functional components. The project intends to explore the conceptual and theoretical implications of this framework, and its capacity to guide the elaboration of specific mathematical and computational models of ecosystemic organization and eco-evolutionary dynamics. The inquiry about the individuation of ecosystems will be conducted by jointly considering different levels of biological organization. In particular, the project will analyze the analogies, dissimilarities and interactions between ecosystems and organisms: not only ecosystems are a different class of individuals when compared to organisms but, crucially, they are so because they are composed by organisms.

EXPLABIO aims at investigating modes of explanations in evolutionary biology, in order to assess current attempts to extend or revise the classical framework (elaborated in 1930-1950) called “Modern Synthesis,” that was centered on the crucial explanatory role of population genetics as the science of the process of evolution by natural selection. We assume that recent advances in ecology, molecular biology and evolutionary theory of development ("Evo-Devo") are characterized by novel explanatory structures and features, that call for a new account of the explanatory nature of evolutionary biology. EXPLABIO will elaborate such account. For evolutionary biologists, the space of explanations is structured along two axes, namely the two questions: “How does selection proceed?”, and “why is there selection?" ; then a third axis concerns the mechanistic or topological nature of explanations – « topological » meaning here the explanatory character of a set of properties of an abstract structure (like the a phase space, or a fitness landscape) associated to the system under study. EXPLABIO will build this space in details, achieving four interconnected tasks : investigating the explananda of natural selection as population-level explanation; exploring the modes of topological explanation at different levels and their articulation with mechanistic explanation; questioning the status of neutral processes and neutral networks as pervasive explanatory tools in ecology (i.e. Hubbell’s “neutral theory of ecology”) and evolution (i.e. Kimura’s neutralist theory of molecular evolution), and thereby the explanatory status of neutrality and randomness; and finally, addressing the role of time- and space-scale decoupling and coupling in the definition of explananda and the choice of models. For biology, the overall outcome will consist in indications about which complementarities and antagonisms exist between rival theories and their methodologies; for philosophy, we aim at a clearer understanding of what respective roles stochasticity and determinism, population level and individual level, as well as scale separation, play in overall biology. These tasks will be successively tackled, using mathematical tools to define conditions of validity of kinds of explanations, and empirical data (such as data about Gene Regulatory Network of a given cell type in a given species, or about two comparable ecological communities at a same trophic level) to check the fulfillment of these conditions for specific systems. EXPLABIO will be carried on by a team of philosophers of science, evolutionary and molecular biologists and ecologists, including two post-docs hired for the project. It is a truly interdisciplinary project: task 1 is led by a philosopher task 3 and 4 are led by biologists, task 2 is co-led by a biologist and a philosopher. It will be done essentially at the IHPST (CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne), an internationally acknowledged center for philosophy of science, which holds long-lasting collaborations with biology institutions and scientists, as well as with other major international centers in philosophy of science such as Cambridge, Toronto, Duke or Montreal. Interdisciplinary workshops will give rise to collected publications, and mathematical and empirical work will be done to formulate hypotheses about the validity of implicit assumptions for specific explanatory strategies (pertaining either to the Modern Synthesis or to an alternative account), and test them. Deliverables will include coauthored papers in academic journals in philosophy of science and theoretical biology, as well as edited volumes on the results of the tasks.