Matt Haber
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profmatthaber.bsky.social
Matt Haber
@profmatthaber.bsky.social
Philosopher of Biology @ University of Utah

https://sites.google.com/view/matt-haber
If you know an undergrad that would like to spend the summer doing research in my philosophy of biology lab, encourage them to apply to the U’s SPUR program. Includes a $5,000 stipend and subsidized housing to work in my lab.

Details and how to apply here:
tinyurl.com/SPUR-PhilBio...
The Philosophy of Biology Lab: Entangled Lineages, Classification, and Individuality - Office of Undergraduate Research
tinyurl.com
November 6, 2025 at 8:13 PM
The thematic issue I co-edited with @javiersuarez.bsky.social "Complicating the Concept of Lineage" is online. Includes papers by Javier & @phieveigl.bsky.social, @lucielaplane.bsky.social, François Papale, Kate MacCord and me. See reply for links to articles:
doi.org/10.1007/s137...
Complicating the Concept of Lineage: A Topical Collection - Biological Theory
Biological Theory -
doi.org
November 3, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Special issue on "The ecology and evolution of bacterial immune systems." @pradeu.bsky.social @philinbiomed.bsky.social and all the other philosophers interested in immunology, etc.

royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1934
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royalsocietypublishing.org
September 5, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Looking forward to reading this. My undergrads brought up this topic in my lab this morning and I'm confident they'll be eager to read this as well.
Really happy to share this article I'm grateful to have been a part of: 'Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience' coauthored with @kevinlala.bsky.social, @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social and Marcus Feldman. Check out a preprint here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
#ScientificRacism #Antiracism
July 28, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Loving Porto #ISHPSSB2025. Looking forward to catching up with folks. If anyone wants to catch my talk it’s on Friday afternoon, in a session with (the always great) Joeri Witteveen. My talk is on rogue taxonomy, taxonomic vandalism and a surprising analog version of bad AI science. Should be fun!
July 19, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Excited to share that "Scaffolding: Selected Contributions of James R. Griesemer to History, Philosophy, and Biology" is out. I introduce Jim's chapter on formalization. (My original title, "Undermining Dichotomies and the Friends You Make Along the Way."

doi.org/10.1007/978-...
Introduction to “Formalization and the Meaning of ‘Theory’ in the Inexact Biological Sciences”
Jim Griesemer papers are typically rich, creative, and challenging. One of my favorite things about a Griesemer paper is that some of the best bits are doing double duty as framing. That is well on di...
doi.org
July 1, 2025 at 7:57 PM
For the cog sci folks out there, a special issue of Philosophical Transactions B @royalsocietypublishing.org: ‘Selection shapes diverse animal minds’. Collection of papers focusing on diversity of evolved animal cognition, from nematodes to primates.

royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1929
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royalsocietypublishing.org
June 27, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Reposted by Matt Haber
Call for Papers - AAHPSSS Conference 2025

Submissions are now open!

The 2025 AAHPSSS conference will be held in a hybrid format at the University of Queensland from Wednesday 3rd December to Friday 5th December.

Further details can be found on our website:
aahpsss.net.au/conference/2...
2025 Conference
Submissions are now open and will be due by mid-July. Abstracts can be submitted here. We are pleased to announce that the 2025 conference of the Australasian Association for the History, Ph…
aahpsss.net.au
June 25, 2025 at 3:28 AM
Very happy to see my "Positively Misleading Errors" finally published (it's been a long road). It generalizes an error of statistical reasoning discovered by Joe Felsenstein in 1978. Really happy with how it turned out.

Currently free to access and download, so go for it!

doi.org/10.1007/s112...
Positively misleading errors - Synthese
Positively misleading errors are errors of statistical reasoning in which adding data to an analysis will systematically and reliably strengthen support for an erroneous hypothesis over a correct one....
doi.org
June 25, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Excited to share the publication of my paper, "Biology's Einstein Moment" in Biological Theory. TL;DR: biology is complex and entangled and there's lot of very cool recent upshots of this. (Shout out to @javiersuarez.bsky.social). PS open access, so it's free to download.
doi.org/10.1007/s137...
Biology’s Einstein Moment: Specifying Lineal Frames of Reference and Rejecting Absolute Biological History - Biological Theory
We are currently in the midst of what I call biology’s Einstein moment. This is the rejection of absolute biological history, the idea that there is an invariant, privileged biological history against...
doi.org
February 17, 2025 at 6:25 PM
Reposted by Matt Haber
Interested in lineages? Read this paper by Kate MacCord on the germline.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Fun and provocative. A great combination of history and philosophy of biology.
Part of a spetial issue on Lineage in Biological Theory. @javiersuarez.bsky.social @profmatthaber.bsky.social
Let’s Talk About Sex…Cell Lineages - Biological Theory
Sex is fundamental to many organisms. It is through sexual reproduction that humans, and many metazoans (multicellular eukaryotes in the animal kingdom), propagate our species. For more than 150 years...
link.springer.com
January 13, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Matt Haber
"Cancer clones revised". Out in Biological Theory: rdcu.be/d4SEk
My first philosophy paper that includes a bioinformatic analysis (variance in gene expression from RNAseq data). Nothing fancy. But a first step. One I care about.
#PhiLabo
Cancer Clones Revised
rdcu.be
December 26, 2024 at 5:32 PM
I offer my students a menu of assignments they may select from. My current favorite is "Create a Course Playlist." Students include at least 8 songs and write liner notes describing how they correspond to topics or texts we covered in class. Here's an example of some liner notes.
Liner Notes For Course Playlists: PHIL 3520-001 Fall 2023 Bioethics
utah.instructure.com
November 16, 2023 at 5:20 AM