Content uploaded by Christoph J. Hueck
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Christoph J. Hueck on May 05, 2025
Content may be subject to copyright.
Tübingen, July 16 to 19, 2025
International Philosophical Conference
on Cognition of the Living Organism
Tagungszentrum Westspitze, Eisenbahnstr. 1, 72072 Tübingen
Over the past 25 years, the recognition that genetics and Darwinism are not
sufficient to fully explain organisms – since only living beings can contain
genes and undergo evolution – has led to a renewed philosophical
engagement with the question of life. The organism has drawn attention
both as an ontological reality and as an epistemological category. This
growing interest involves a reconsideration of the ideas of the German
Romantics and Idealists – among them Kant, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel –
as well as of twentieth-century organicist thinkers. Whereas Kant and
Schelling examined the epistemological preconditions for grasping the
organic, Goethe developed a phenomenological method for understanding
life. The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner analyzed Goethe’s approach in
depth and gave rise to a largely overlooked tradition of empirical research.
The conference will explore the challenge of cognizing the organism from
historical, ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, and Goethean
perspectives.
Contributors: Benjamin Bembé (Witten), Bohang Chen (Zhejiang), Luke
Fischer (Sydney), Andrea Gambarotto (Vienna), Levi Haeck (Ghent), Craig
Holdrege (Ghent, NY), Christoph Hueck (Tübingen), Philippe Huneman
(Paris), Jan Kerkmann (Freiburg), Dalia Nassar (Sydney), Daniel Nicholson
(Fairfax), Greg Rupik (Toronto), Ulrich Schlösser (Tübingen), Matthew
Segall (San Francisco), Joan Steigerwald (Toronto), Georg Toepfer (Berlin),
Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Ghent), Denis Walsh (Toronto).
www.clc2025.de
Akanthos Akademie Stuttgart
Cognizing Life
Conference 2025
Cognizing Life Conference 2025
Public Lecture
Prof. Dr. Joan Steigerwald
Tübingen’s Place in the Formation of Biology:
Kielmeyer, Schelling, and German Contributions
at the turn of the Nineteenth Century
Wednesday, July 16, 20:00 s.t.
Tagungszentrum Westspitze, Eisenbahnstr. 1, 72072 Tübingen
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the University of Tübingen became
a center for the development of both biology and philosophy,
significantly influenced by Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer and Friedrich
Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Kielmeyer pioneered a systematic approach to
biology in his famous 1793 lecture, proposing that life is governed by a
balance of vital forces and developed first ideas on the connection
between embryology and a potential evolution of organisms. Schelling
expanded on these ideas, seeing nature as a self-organizing, living whole
rather than a mechanical entity. Together, their work redefined nature as
a dynamic, interdependent organism, influencing both nineteenth-
century science and philosophy and laying the groundwork for
interdisciplinary approaches to studying life.
Joan Steigerwald is a professor in humanities and science and technology
studies at York University in Toronto. She is the author of Experimenting at
the Boundaries of Life: Organic Vitality in Germany around 1800 (2019). She has
edited a special issue of Kabiri, “Schelling and Philosophies of Life” (2024), as
well as two special issues for Studies in History and Philosophy of Science,
“Entanglements of Instruments and Media in Exploring Organic Worlds” (2016),
and “Kantian Teleology and the Biological Sciences” (2006). She has published
widely on Kant, Schelling, Goethe, and the German life sciences. Her
current project is A Romantic Natural History.
Organized by Akanthos Akademie Stuttgart
Wed, July 16 Thu, July 17 Fri, July 18 Sat, July 19
09:00
-10:15
Philippe Huneman
: The
Unity of Kant’s Account
of the Organism and its
Dual Fate
Dalia Nassar
: Life and
Death in Schelling’s
Philosophy of Nature
Jan Kerkmann
:
Metaphysical
Implications of
Goethe’s Philosophy
of Nature
10:15
-10:45
Coffee break
Coffee break
Coffee break
10:45
-12:00
Andrea Gambarotto
:
Kant’s Controversial
Legacy for
Contemporary Biology
Matthew Segall
:
Revitalizing the Life
Sciences: Whitehead’s
Organic Realism and
the Return of Romantic
Science
Christoph Hueck
:
Rudolf Steiner on
Goethe’s Morphology
as Rational
Organicism
12:00
-13:15
Gertrudis Van de
Vijver/Levi Haeck
:
Functional Accounts of
Organisms: Divided
Between Imaginary and
Symbolic
Gregory Rupik
: Goethe
and the Challenge of
Representing
Metamorphosis
Georg Toepfer
:
Viewing in Thinking.
On the Methodology
of the Goethean
Understanding of the
Organism
13:15
-14:45
Lunch break
Lunch break
Round Table Closing
14:45
-16:00
Bohang Chen: Aspects of
Chronic Vitalism: A
Historico
-Critical
Reflection
Craig Holdrege
:
Practicing Goethean
Science
16:00
-16:30
Welcome and Coffee
Coffee break
Coffee break
16:30
-17:45
Ulrich Schlösser
: On
Philosophy of Nature
(Naturphilosophie)
Daniel Nicholson
: The
Failed Organicist
Revolution During the
First Half of the 20th
Century
Benjamin Bembé
:
Mammalian
Morphology in a
Goethean Perspective
-
Polarity and the ‘Open
Secret’ of the Middle
17:45
-19:00
Denis Walsh
: [What is
an organism?]
Round Table Discussion
Round Table Discussion
19:00
-20:00
Dinner
Dinner
Dinner
20:00
-21:30
Joan Steigerwald
(public) Tübingen’s
Place in the
Formation of Biology:
Kielmeyer, Schelling,
and German
Contributions at the
Turn of the
Nineteenth Century
Luke Fischer
: Public
Poetry Reading
Christoph Hueck
:
Exhibition on Goethe
and Steiner
Program & Registration
Please register under www.clc2025.de
No registration fee.
The conference will be livestreamed and recorded. Once you have registered, you will
receive a video link via email two days before the conference.