Understanding the Concept of Disease of Evolutionary Medicine and Developing Conceptual Tools of Evolutionary Medicine.

• Applicant: Ozan Altan Altinok, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572682284

Evolutionary Medicine (EM) has been a growing discipline since the mid-1990s. However, this growth has occurred without thorough philosophical and ethical analysis employing the recently developed tools of philosophy of science, science and technology studies (STS) and disease metaphysics. Although the EM research programme has been influential in evolutionary biology and the health sciences, apart from a few works, philosophical attention to this burgeoning and potentially impactful field has lacked strength, detail, and vision for practical application. The majority of existing philosophical engagement has focused on the kinds of explanation or the explanatory potential of EM, with very little detailed analysis of its metaphysics, ontology, and the assumptions embedded within its methodology. In contrast, related fields in the philosophy of biology, such as the philosophy of epigenetics and cultural evolutionary theory, are well-established through employment of recent methods and frameworks of philosophy. Current philosophical approaches to EM often lack the necessary methodologies from the philosophy of science, ethical reflection on their own value-laden methodologies, and the metaphysical approaches to disease required to adequately inform a comprehensive philosophy of evolutionary medicine. This work aims to fill this gap by addressing three key points of intersection between EM and philosophy of science: First: Concept Use in EM. This involves studying the usage of concepts related to kinds of disease and disease vulnerability within EM. This will be achieved by tracking recent developments in the field through tools from the philosophy of science, such as methods from the philosophy of science in practice, guided literature research, attending lab meetings, and cognitive ethnography. Second: Research Repertoires of EM. This entails investigating the potential for situating EM within frameworks of research repertoires from the philosophy of science and technoscientific imaginations from Science and Technology Studies (STS), utilizing grounded theory. This will involve determining the research agenda-setting processes of EM centers and understanding the design of the Environments of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA) – a key concept for developing the match/mismatch agenda of EM. The aim is to assess the research repertoires of EM researchers and the values involved in their construction. Third: EM and Disease Metaphysics. This involves extending evolutionary medicine’s perspectives beyond medical explanations to integrate them with new ontologies of health and disease, disease metaphysics, and value-laden concepts and conceptions of health. This includes designing novel concepts of disease, informed by disease metaphysics, which are suitable for EM.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Host: Professor Dr. Adrian Jäggi