Willkommen bei der
Cognizing Life Conference 2025
Tübingen
July 16 to 19, 2025
International Philosophical Conference on Cognition of the Living Organism
Wednesday, July 16 - Saturday, July 19, 2025
Tagungszentrum Westspitze, Eisenbahnstr. 1, 72072 Tübingen
Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Wien), Levi Haeck (Ghent), Craig Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman (Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson (Fairfax), Gregory Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösser (Tübingen), Matthew Segall (San Francisco), Joan Steigerwald (Toronto), Georg Toepfer (Berlin), Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent), Denis Walsh (Toronto).
Contributors
Over the past 25 years, the recognition that genetics and Darwinism are not sufficient to fully explain organisms — since only living beings can contain genes and undergo evolution — has led to a renewed philosophical engagement with the question of life. The organism has drawn attention both as an ontological reality and as an epistemological category. This growing interest involves a reconsideration of the ideas of the German Romantics and Idealists — among them Kant, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel — as well as of twentieth-century organicist thinkers. Whereas Kant and Schelling examined the epistemological preconditions for grasping the organic, Goethe developed a phenomenological method for understanding life. The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner analyzed Goethe’s approach in depth and gave rise to a largely overlooked tradition of empirical research. The conference will explore the challenge of cognizing the organism from historical, ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, and Goethean perspectives.
Subject
In den vergangenen 25 Jahren hat sich zunehmend die Einsicht durchgesetzt, dass Genetik und Darwinismus allein nicht ausreichen, um das Wesen des Organismus vollständig zu erklären – denn nur lebende Organismen verfügen über Gene und unterliegen der Evolution. Diese Erkenntnis hat eine erneute philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach dem Lebendigen angestoßen. Der Organismus rückte dabei sowohl als ontologische Realität als auch als epistemologische Kategorie in den Fokus. Das wachsende Interesse an diesem Thema geht einher mit einer Neubewertung der Gedanken der deutschen Romantiker und Idealisten – unter ihnen Kant, Goethe, Schelling und Hegel – sowie der organizistischen Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Während Kant und Schelling die erkenntnistheoretischen Voraussetzungen für das Verständnis des Organischen reflektierten, entwickelte Goethe eine phänomenologische Methode zur Erfassung des Lebens. Der österreichische Philosoph Rudolf Steiner analysierte Goethes Ansatz eingehend und begründete damit eine weitgehend übersehene Tradition empirischer Forschung. Die Tagung widmet sich der Herausforderung, den lebendigen Organismus aus historischer, ontologischer, metaphysischer, erkenntnistheoretischer und goetheanistischer Perspektive zu erkennen.
Thema
July 16, 2025
16:00 Opening
16:30-17:45
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schlösser: On Philosophy of Nature (Naturphilosophie)
17:45-19:00
Prof. Dr. Denis Walsh: What is an Organism?
20:00-21:30 Public Leture
Prof. Dr. Joan Steigerwald: Tübingen’s Place in the Formation of Biology: Kielmeyer, Schelling, and German Contributions at the turn of the Nineteenth Century
July 17, 2025
09:00-10:15
Prof. Dr. Philippe Huneman: The Unity of Kant’s Account of the Organism and its Dual Fate
10:45-12:00
Dr. Andrea Gambarotto: Kant’s Controversial Legacy for Contemporary Biology
12:00-13:15
Prof. Dr. Gertrudis Van de Vijver / Dr. Levi Haeck: Functional Accounts of Organisms: Divided Between Imaginary and Symbolic
14:45-16:00
Dr. Bohang Chen: Aspects of Chronic Vitalism: A Historico-Critical Reflection
16:30-17:45
Prof. Dr. Daniel Nicholson: The Failed Organicist Revolution During the First Half of the 20th Century
17:45-18:30
Round-Table Discussion
20:00-21:30
Dr. Luke Fischer: Public Reading of Poetry
Prof. Dr. Christoph Hueck: Exhibition on Goethe and Rudolf Steiner
July 18, 2025
09:00-10:15
Prof. Dr. Dalia Nassar: Life and Death in Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature
10:45-12:00
Prof. Dr. Matthew Segall: Revitalizing the Life Sciences: Whitehead’s Organic Realism and the Return of Romantic Science
12:00-13:15
Dr. Gregory Rupik: Goethe and the Challenge of Representing Metamorphosis
14:45-16:00
Dr. Craig Holdrege: Organism and Context: An Expanded Understanding of Life
16:30-17:45
Prof. Dr. Benjamin Bembé: Mammalian Morphology in a Goethean Perspective - Polarity and the ‘Open Secret’ of the Middle
17:45-18:30
Round-Table Discussion
July 19, 2025
09:00-10:15
PD Dr. Jan Kerkmann: Metaphysical Implications of Goethe’s Philosophy of Nature
10:45-12:00
Prof. Dr. Christoph Hueck: Rudolf Steiner on Goethe’s Morphology as Rational Organicism
12:00-13:15
PD Dr. Georg Toepfer: Viewing in Thinking. On the Methodology of the Goethean Understanding of the Organism
13:15-14:00
Round Table Closing
Program
Prof. Dr. Joan Steigerwald
Tübingen’s Place in the Formation of Biology: Kielmeyer, Schelling, and German Contributions at the turn of the Nineteenth Century
Wednesday, July 16, 20:00 s.t.
Tagungszentrum Westspitze, Eisenbahnstr. 1, 72072 Tübingen
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the University of Tübingen became a center for the development of both biology and philosophy, significantly influenced by Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Kielmeyer pioneered a systematic approach to biology in his famous 1793 lecture, proposing that life is governed by a balance of vital forces and developed first ideas on the connection between embryology and a potential evolution of organisms. Schelling expanded on these ideas, seeing nature as a self-organizing, living whole rather than a mechanical entity. Together, their work redefined nature as a dynamic, interdependent organism, influencing both nineteenth-century science and philosophy and laying the groundwork for interdisciplinary approaches to studying life.
Joan Steigerwald is a professor in humanities and science and technology studies at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life: Organic Vitality in Germany around 1800 (2019). She has edited a special issue of Kabiri, “Schelling and Philosophies of Life” (2024), as well as two special issues for Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, “Entanglements of Instruments and Media in Exploring Organic Worlds” (2016), and “Kantian Teleology and the Biological Sciences” (2006). She has published widely on Kant, Schelling, Goethe, and the German life sciences. Her current project is A Romantic Natural History.