ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book speaks of ‘philosophy of biology before biology’ may seem at first glance to be a piece of unrepentant anachronism, if not a return to the bad Whiggish habits of several generations earlier. Vital forces, the human–animal boundary, the creativity and spontaneity of nature, and the transformation of living forms over time became major metaphysical issues and ‘scientific’ issues, inseparably. Philosophers moving away from the ‘Scientific Revolution’ focus on mechanism, laws of nature, and gravity towards teleology, embodiment, organization and vitality understood as a metaphysical problem are equally focused on these shifting scientific grounds, which serve as a backdrop for the constitution of biology as a science. The book produces a fresh but also systematic perspective on both the history of biology as a science and on the early versions of what came to be called the philosophy of biology.
