Research

This page is about my current and future research. See a shorter version, my teaching, cv, or my publications elsewhere.

A photo from my workshop on Universal Biology at ELSI in Tokyo, Japan. This group of hyper-multidisciplinary scholars who attended.
Research Goals

I have two primary research goals:

  • Connect concepts in philosophy of science to advances in astrobiology in order to develop a practicable notion of universal biology.
  • Map and develop under-researched philosophical issues in the new sciences of astrobiology, microbiology, and synthetic biology, specifically with respect to philosophical issues surrounding the origins of life, life in the Universe, and the nature of life.
Current Research Interests

My research focuses on related set of topics leading to ultimate question of universal biology. Universal biology is the study of what we can justifiably conclude about biology everywhere based on what we know about Life on Earth. To that end, I’ve organized a conference and written several papers setting up the groundwork for a monograph on the topic, namely Mariscal 2015 and Mariscal & Fleming 2017. In the first, I explore the extent to which our evidence limits the kinds of inferences we can make about lifelike entities in the Universe (the N=1 Problem). I believe there are justified inferences we can make about life elsewhere, although perhaps these are broader inferences than those that typically interest biologists or philosophers (e.g. size and energy limits, dependencies, etc.). In Mariscal & Fleming 2017, we explore three ways to universalize biology: by focusing on traits (as in convergent evolution), theory (as in population genetics), or substrate (as in artificial life). In sum, the domain of each is different; we should be careful to treat them as separate, but overlapping discussions.

Related to this work, I’ve touched on the universal biology of traits with respect to convergent evolution (Powell & Mariscal 2015, 2014, and 2017). In those works, I consider the extent to which we might be justified in inferring traits to be generalizable. All else being equal, the more often an independent and specific trait evolves in a more common environment, the more justified our claims about its universality are. I’ve also touched on the theory view of universal biology, specifically with respect to evolutionary theory (Booth, Mariscal, and Doolittle 2016). I take pragmatist stance with respect to Darwinism, arguing that diversity of microbial evolution should warrant us think about evolutionary as sort of ‘toolbox’ that includes range of mechanisms and processes which apply to different extents across the web of life.

Much of these discussions requires an understanding of what we mean by life itself (e.g. Mariscal & Doolittle 2017, and Mariscal 2021). I take a deflationary position in which I deny that the life category is a natural kind. I consider Life on Earth to be a historical particular. It belongs to many categories that might be natural kinds: evolving systems, biochemical systems, etc., but interested parties differ as to which is equivalent to the life category. This understanding of life implies that the business of defining life is conceptually mistaken, but that we can nevertheless study Life-like phenomena as long as we specify in which way it is similar to Life on Earth.

In order to understand what could be the case for Life-like phenomena elsewhere, it’s important to characterize Life on Earth. To that extent, much of my work has focused on the origin of life (Mariscal et al. 2019, Scharf et al. 2015, Mariscal & Doolittle 2015, and an in-progress paper on the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all life). In these works, I survey the open questions about life’s origin, describe the paths for developing work on the issue, and explore hypotheses over the origin and path of biological complexity. In short, the origin(s) of life are shrouded in mystery and each viable approaches involves philosophical commitments that sometimes conflict. (Note that many authors in several of papers, when I have served as lead author, this actually proved to more work than single-authored piece would have been.) A related paper, Mariscal & Brunet 2020, explores the extent and limits of Life on Earth. I believe the development of topic is hampered because philosophical commitments differ across scholars. That said, a pragmatic, adequate characterization of investigations may help bridge those differences.

My philosophical interests can sometimes be broader than this specific research trajectory. For example, I occasionally lend my support to biologists interested in philosophical issues (Stull et al. 2020). In that piece, we challenged the notion that biological ancestry estimations should be professionally forbidden. I also write general philosophy of science to introduce students to the issues that might come up in interdisciplinary cognitive science studies (Mariscal 2022). One current in-progress piece focuses on the professional tendency to privilege consistency in philosophy as the primary epistemic value rather than one among many. Lastly, I have also written on the societal impacts of revolutionary biotechnologies (Mariscal & Petropanagos 2016). I maintain that revolutionary technologies cannot be regulated in any static manner as they change too quickly. Instead, I believe we need a dynamic approach: a regulatory body focusing on the field.

Because the issues I study are most I am interested in the science that studies these issues most directly, astrobiology. I am co-editor in a journal (International Journal of Astrobiology), have co-founded a society on this (Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology), organized a conference (SoCIA), and co-edited an anthology on the topic (Smith & Mariscal 2020). My plan is to write my monograph on universal biology and subsequently develop a textbook for the philosophy of astrobiology in hopes of helping shape the development of exciting new field.

Dissertation

Title: Universal Biology

Committee: Robert Brandon (co-chair), Alex Rosenberg (co-chair), the late, great Karen Neander, Dan McShea (in biology dept.), Tyler Curtain (at UNC), V. Louise Roth (in biology dept.)

Abstract: Our only example of life is the one we have on Earth– which shares a single ancestor and thus forms a single lineage. We know little of what life would look like if evolved from a different origin. Still, there are common pressures in the universe life must address if it is to persist, such as entropy, radiation, and populational capacity. The possible solutions to these problems will be constrained by universal factors, like geometry, mechanics, and chemistry. The surface-to-volume ratio property of geometry, for example, limits the size of unassisted cells in a given medium. This effect is universal, measurable, and specific. If universal problems in biology have a limited set of possible solutions, some common outcomes must consistently emerge.
In my dissertation, I developed and defended an account of universal biology, the study of non-vague, non- arbitrary, non-accidental, biological generalizations. In my account, a candidate biological generalization is assessed by the assumptions it makes. With a clear statement of the underlying justifications, we can assess the descriptive specificity and counterfactual support for each biological generalization, which may vary wildly. I focus on particular claims of these sorts, assess the conditions under which they might apply, and attempt to draw general conclusions for biology. I contend that using a stringent, causal analysis of this sort, we can have insight into the nature of life everywhere. Life on Earth may be our single example of life, but this is only a reason to be cautious in our approach to life in the universe, not a reason to give up altogether.

Chapter Breakdown

Chapter 1 – Can we Regard Biology as Universal?

I begin my dissertation with a discussion of skepticism about universal generalizations in biology. Most notably, J.J.C. Smart, who argued that biology was akin to engineering in scope. Smart alleged biology will not have laws and thus not be universal. He claims that all biological generalizations will be vague, arbitrary, or false. I show him to be wrong by example and provide an analysis as to how thinking in terms of physics and natural kinds is liable to lead us astray when it comes to biology.

Chapter 2 – A Review of Alternative Universal Biologies

In this chapter, I do a critical literature review of the various accounts of universal biology that have been proposed since Darwin. I find many of the accounts underdeveloped or improperly grounded. I then sketch what would be accomplished in an ideal account of universal biology.

Chapter 3 – Regarding Biology as a Universal Science

This chapter, a version of which is included as a writing sample, develops my positive proposal. I show what aspects of prior views I have retained, give guidelines as to what in biology can count as universal, show the payoffs of my account, and defend it from preliminary objections.

Chapter 4 –Life Eliminativism in a Universal Context

I follow my account with a novel way of understanding evolution in continuous (rather than binary) terms. This understanding of evolution has a payoff in effectively justifying the arena of cultural evolution, stellar evolution, and chemical evolution: areas that have been thought of as evolutionary but don’t actually fit the standard Darwinian model.

Chapter 5 – On Possible Biology with Non-Actual Physics

The prior two chapters have an interesting consequence of showing the principles of evolution to ultimately be justified by a form of probability calculus. In this chapter, I argue that evolutionary systems are not a proper subset of physics and therefore the universality of biology is not derivative of the universality of physics.

Chapter 6 – Spaces of Possibility for Evolutionary Biology

I end with an exploration of how broadly evolution could vary and an assessment of which claims in universal biology would be expected to deviate under probable, nomically possible, and conceptual changes in the initial setup. This truly lets us explore the universality of universal biology.

Future Research Directions

The new sciences and technologies I investigate are not just interesting from the perspective of philosophy of science. I’ve also become interested in other humanistic issues raised by this new research. Astrobiology and synthetic biology both raise questions about valueshould we commercialize outer space, should we actively send signals into space?, and should we modify our biology? I’ve recently become fascinated with this last question new gene-editing technologies have revolutionized what is possible in biology. I wrote a paper on that issue recently. Also founding member the Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology (SSoCIA), and I hosted the second conference in Reno in 2018.

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