Agency and Organisation: The Dialectics of Nature and Life

Rasmus Sandnes Haukedal earned his PhD in Philosophy from Durham University in 2023 with a dissertation on the extended evolutionary synthesis and its philosophical implications. During his PhD studies, he was a research fellow for the Marie Sklodowska-Curie programme Real Smart Cities and co-convened the reading group at the Centre for Culture and Ecology. In his thesis, building the organisational approach in theoretical biology, he argues that the current shifts in evolutionary biology constitutes a dialectical turn, as it accentuates the subjectivity of organismic action – how the organism is able to affect its own evolution. He currently holds a post-doctoral position at the Philosophy department at East China Normal University, during which he intends to expand the dialectical perspective further to demonstrate how dialectics can advance a different scientific ideal that undermines the barrier between the humanities and natural sciences.