Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, June 10, 2024
On Monday, June 10, Dr. Robert Marsland and Dr. Douglas Sponsler gathered an international group of two philosophers and four scientists in the Aula Benedetto XVI for a conversation on the ontology of the living world, with the support of ROR. Dr. Marsland worked as a postdoctoral researcher in biophysics and theoretical ecology before beginning a licentiate in theology under Professor Giulio Maspero, and Dr. Sponsler is a postdoctoral researcher in entomology at the University of Würzburg.
After a brief introductory talk by Dr. Marsland, Professor Ellen Clarke, philosopher of biology at the University of Leeds, began the conversation by setting up the problem of identifying the “units of life.” Using the example of the coral polyp, she showed how the task of identifying where one organism ends and another begins normally presents serious challenges, and that the “paradigm” cases where the boundaries of the individual are immediately obvious are the exception to the general rule. She went on to highlight the relevance of this seemingly abstract question to the task of environmental conservation: in order to devise a coherent policy, one must first identify the entities to be conserved, whether whole ecosystems, smaller communities, or individual species.
With this background in place, Professor Torstein Tollefsen of the University of Oslo provided an overview of two central aspects of Maximus the Confessor’s metaphysics, now commonly referred as “Christocentric cosmology” and “holomerism,” using terms coined by Tollefsen himself. These two notions provide a promising basis on which to construct an ontology of the living world that affirms both the real existence of individual organisms and their real unity within a hierarchical series of ever greater wholes.
After an animated coffee break, the four scientists shared how the question of the units of life arises in their own current research. Professor Fernanda Valdovinos of the University of California-Davis began by suggesting that failure to reflect critically on this question has hampered the progress of ecological understanding, by discouraging investigation of mutualisms – even though such co-dependencies between distinct species sustain the primary production at the foundation of most ecosystems on earth.
The other three scientists offered specific proposals for identifying the units of life, representing the general consensus of their own field of study. As a theoretical biologist, Professor Chaitanya Gokhale of the University of Würzburg concurred with the approach advanced by Professor Clarke in the first talk, defining the biological individual as whatever is subject to natural selection, by virtue of the three essential ingredients of reproduction, inheritance and variation. As physicists, Professor Tikhonov (who joined us online from the University of Washington in Saint Louis) and Dr. Jacopo Grilli from the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste regarded ontology as a problem-specific question, with the individual to be defined in whatever way best facilitates prediction and control in a given context.
Finally, Dr. Sponsler wrapped up the afternoon by explaining the central challenge that must be faced in order to make progress towards a more adequate vision of the structure and dynamics of the living world. One must have the courage and energy to pursue rigorous formalization, as these scientists have demonstrated, while also knowing when to renounce this ambition in the awareness that the mystery of existence always exceeds our grasp. He pointed to this as the most important fruit to be sought from science-theology dialogue, and from the encounter with Maximus in particular: accompanying one another in the arduous path towards epistemological maturity.
