New Books in Philosophy Ellen Clarke, "The Units of Life: Kinds of Individual in Biology" (Oxford UP, 2025)
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Feb 10, 2026 Ellen Clarke, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds known for her work on philosophy of biology, discusses when collections of parts count as evolutionary individuals. She examines puzzling cases like starfish fragmentation, mechanisms that secure shared fates, how biologists count individuals in practice, and mergers driving new levels of biological organization.
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Starfish Splitting Shows Fuzzy Boundaries
- Clarke describes starfish that split and regenerate to show how ordinary boundaries of individuals fail.
- She uses this gruesome example to illustrate how parts can be one organism now and separate organisms later.
Choose Units Based On Lineage Details
- Biologists should choose bookkeeping units based on lineage-specific developmental mechanisms.
- Clarke advises examining particulars (e.g., plant modularity) before deciding what to count for fitness measurements.
Organism Concepts Are Scientific Idealizations
- Clarke treats the scientific organism concept as an idealization with thresholds for evolutionary potential.
- She emphasizes scientists deliberately simplify messy biological continuity to create useful, projectable units.
