chris shambaugh
@cshambaugh.bsky.social
phil phd at UO - 19th century German philosophy (esp. Hegel and Marx), philosophy of biology - he/him
Pinned
chris shambaugh
@cshambaugh.bsky.social
· Sep 28
Marx's Concept of Life
This essay aims to reveal the conceptual unity of an ensemble of concepts of organic, animal, and anthropological life articulated by the young Karl Marx between 1842 and 1844. To lay the groundwork ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
My new article, “Marx’s Concept of Life,” is now out in EJP.
Reposted by chris shambaugh
Defining non-human #ToolUse remains contested, complicating scientific generalization & inspiring the concept of “tooling.” Our new 📄 @philscijournal.bsky.social proposes a synthetic framework to advance research on 🔧 use & tooling 👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #philsci #cogsci #evosky #HPbio
November 10, 2025 at 2:15 PM
Defining non-human #ToolUse remains contested, complicating scientific generalization & inspiring the concept of “tooling.” Our new 📄 @philscijournal.bsky.social proposes a synthetic framework to advance research on 🔧 use & tooling 👇 www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #philsci #cogsci #evosky #HPbio
Reposted by chris shambaugh
Just began working on organizing the blog & converting to shareable PDFs, & it’s going to be a big project! For life reasons, it’s going to be harder for me to keep going now, so any support would be crazy appreciated! & thanks for reading & sharing Substudies!
open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
November 7, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Just began working on organizing the blog & converting to shareable PDFs, & it’s going to be a big project! For life reasons, it’s going to be harder for me to keep going now, so any support would be crazy appreciated! & thanks for reading & sharing Substudies!
open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
open.substack.com/pub/jamescra...
Two new open-access articles from Andrea Gambarotto and collaborators:
Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back (w/ Thomas van Es): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue (w/ Ezequiel A. Di Paolo): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back (w/ Thomas van Es): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue (w/ Ezequiel A. Di Paolo): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue - Synthese
Synthese - Enactive perspectives on habit reject mechanistic models and call attention to the neglect of this concept in computational approaches to the mind. Recent work has brought enactive views...
link.springer.com
November 8, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Two new open-access articles from Andrea Gambarotto and collaborators:
Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back (w/ Thomas van Es): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue (w/ Ezequiel A. Di Paolo): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back (w/ Thomas van Es): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Habit: a Hegelian-enactive dialogue (w/ Ezequiel A. Di Paolo): link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Reposted by chris shambaugh
OTD in 1880, Charles Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants. D believed that plants are active agents in the world: “A radicle may be compared with a burrowing animal such as a mole, which wishes to penetrate perpendicularly down into the ground.”
🧪🌱🐋 #philsci #HistSTM 🦋🦫
🧪🌱🐋 #philsci #HistSTM 🦋🦫
November 6, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Reposted by chris shambaugh
To assume one basis for life and a different basis for science is as a matter of course a lie. | Marx
November 6, 2025 at 8:12 PM
To assume one basis for life and a different basis for science is as a matter of course a lie. | Marx
Reposted by chris shambaugh
Marx as a philosophical biologist?
Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism.
www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism.
www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
November 6, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Marx as a philosophical biologist?
Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism.
www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
Chris Shambaugh on young Marx's account of organismal agency, its relation to human life to the critique of capitalism.
www.dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...
Author’s bio in a J.B.S. Haldane children’s book: “He thinks a lot of the magicians in old days were only doing, or trying to do, what scientists and engineers do now, and that science can be more exciting than magic ever was.”
November 5, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Author’s bio in a J.B.S. Haldane children’s book: “He thinks a lot of the magicians in old days were only doing, or trying to do, what scientists and engineers do now, and that science can be more exciting than magic ever was.”
Reposted by chris shambaugh
Reading a Julius Schaxel article via @jamescrane.bsky.social translation. It’s so inspiring seeing a Marxist scientist reading and integrating science and philosophy like this. Anticipated evo-devo before its formalization! It’s also interesting how he’s still ahead of time w/ some philbio topics!
October 28, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reading a Julius Schaxel article via @jamescrane.bsky.social translation. It’s so inspiring seeing a Marxist scientist reading and integrating science and philosophy like this. Anticipated evo-devo before its formalization! It’s also interesting how he’s still ahead of time w/ some philbio topics!
Reposted by chris shambaugh
It’s here! My first physical copy of my book, out next month. @uchicagopress.bsky.social have a lovely traditional of sending the first copy straight from their offices in branded wrapping paper.
October 26, 2025 at 9:48 AM
It’s here! My first physical copy of my book, out next month. @uchicagopress.bsky.social have a lovely traditional of sending the first copy straight from their offices in branded wrapping paper.
Reposted by chris shambaugh
working on a translation of Julius Schaxel’s “Das biologische Individuum” (1930) on the natural-historical emergence of ‘the individual’ & the possibility of thinking its concept—by distinguishing it from individuality & dissolving the individual back into its constituent relations & movements!
October 15, 2025 at 6:05 AM
working on a translation of Julius Schaxel’s “Das biologische Individuum” (1930) on the natural-historical emergence of ‘the individual’ & the possibility of thinking its concept—by distinguishing it from individuality & dissolving the individual back into its constituent relations & movements!
Reposted by chris shambaugh
Amazing to have Elliott Sober delivering his keynote "Richard Lewontin - Biologist, Philosopher, and Marxist" at the Dialectical Biology Today Conference! 🌱🐋 @ihpst-uoft.bsky.social
October 10, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Amazing to have Elliott Sober delivering his keynote "Richard Lewontin - Biologist, Philosopher, and Marxist" at the Dialectical Biology Today Conference! 🌱🐋 @ihpst-uoft.bsky.social
Reposted by chris shambaugh
My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell
<i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited
Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - <i>What Is Life?</i> Revisited
www.cambridge.org
October 10, 2025 at 1:52 PM
My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell
Reposted by chris shambaugh
I'm very much looking forward to the BPC conference tomorrow and on Friday at @ruhr-uni-bochum.de! Everyone is welcome to attend and you can also watch the stream on zoom. I will give a talk at 4pm about early 20th century concepts of plant agency (featuring Arber, Ungerer and Francé). 🌿
We are organising the 1st Basic Principles of Cognition conference at RUB, Germany, 9-10 October 2025. Save the date! #MinimalCognition #BasalCognition #CognitiveScience #CogSci #Philosophy #Mind #Life #Organism #Evolution basicprinciplesofcognition.wordpress.com
#EPSA25 #ESPP #GAP12 #KogWiss
#EPSA25 #ESPP #GAP12 #KogWiss
Basic Principles of Cognition
1st Basic Principles of Cognition Conference. October 9-10 , Bochum, Germany.
basicprinciplesofcognition.wordpress.com
October 8, 2025 at 12:43 PM
I'm very much looking forward to the BPC conference tomorrow and on Friday at @ruhr-uni-bochum.de! Everyone is welcome to attend and you can also watch the stream on zoom. I will give a talk at 4pm about early 20th century concepts of plant agency (featuring Arber, Ungerer and Francé). 🌿
Recently discovered this critical glossary of key terms in evolutionary biology, which was edited by Keller and Lloyd, and inspired by Raymond Williams. Great resource
October 5, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Recently discovered this critical glossary of key terms in evolutionary biology, which was edited by Keller and Lloyd, and inspired by Raymond Williams. Great resource
This is a terrific new paper on Marx's naturalism. I highly recommend it!
October 1, 2025 at 9:27 PM
This is a terrific new paper on Marx's naturalism. I highly recommend it!
The euphoria that has accompanied our ability, finally, to give a complete and unambiguous description of the allelic composition of a natural population for some arbitrarily chosen piece of the genome has hindered us from seeing that the problem of epigenesis has not been eliminated. | Lewontin
September 30, 2025 at 4:14 PM
The euphoria that has accompanied our ability, finally, to give a complete and unambiguous description of the allelic composition of a natural population for some arbitrarily chosen piece of the genome has hindered us from seeing that the problem of epigenesis has not been eliminated. | Lewontin
Reposted by chris shambaugh
heading to Berlin next week for a fellowship at the @cpkp.bsky.social. Looking forward to connecting with other scholars working across intellectual divides in philosophy!
September 28, 2025 at 10:24 PM
heading to Berlin next week for a fellowship at the @cpkp.bsky.social. Looking forward to connecting with other scholars working across intellectual divides in philosophy!
Why was natural selection compared to a composer by Dobzhansky; to a poet by Simpson; to a sculptor by Mayr, and to, of all people, Mr. Shakespeare by Julian Huxley? [...] To illustrate the essence of Darwinism – the creativity of natural selection. | Gould
September 29, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Why was natural selection compared to a composer by Dobzhansky; to a poet by Simpson; to a sculptor by Mayr, and to, of all people, Mr. Shakespeare by Julian Huxley? [...] To illustrate the essence of Darwinism – the creativity of natural selection. | Gould
Reposted by chris shambaugh
If you missed that great Cognizing life conference in Tubingen organized by Christoph Hueck two weeks ago, here are the videos of the presentations. Talks by Denis Walsh, Joan Steigerwald, Dan Nicholson and many others.
 www.clc2025.de/videos
 www.clc2025.de/videos
August 2, 2025 at 9:22 PM
If you missed that great Cognizing life conference in Tubingen organized by Christoph Hueck two weeks ago, here are the videos of the presentations. Talks by Denis Walsh, Joan Steigerwald, Dan Nicholson and many others.
 www.clc2025.de/videos
 www.clc2025.de/videos
My new article, “Marx’s Concept of Life,” is now out in EJP.
Marx's Concept of Life
This essay aims to reveal the conceptual unity of an ensemble of concepts of organic, animal, and anthropological life articulated by the young Karl Marx between 1842 and 1844. To lay the groundwork ...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 28, 2025 at 2:53 PM
My new article, “Marx’s Concept of Life,” is now out in EJP.
Whence came the mirage of a space between nature and nurture? How did this illusion become so deeply entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so resistant to dissolution? | Keller
September 28, 2025 at 5:43 AM
Whence came the mirage of a space between nature and nurture? How did this illusion become so deeply entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so resistant to dissolution? | Keller
I’m excited to be part of this hybrid event celebrating Richard Lewontin’s legacy from October 10-12. I’ll be presenting a talk titled “Dialectical Biology as Ideology Critique” on Saturday morning. You can register for the Zoom link and see the program here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale...
September 26, 2025 at 7:54 PM
I’m excited to be part of this hybrid event celebrating Richard Lewontin’s legacy from October 10-12. I’ll be presenting a talk titled “Dialectical Biology as Ideology Critique” on Saturday morning. You can register for the Zoom link and see the program here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale...