Biological Individuals

Biological individuals are an important feature of the world we live in. To better understand this we can start with a focal question: what are biological individuals? As simple as that sounds, it quickly leads to puzzling but illuminating complexities and variations in the biological world. To address these, it helps to articulate the larger conceptual space surrounding the focal question. A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is also useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality.