Melinda B. Fagan, “Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology: Knowledge in Flesh and Blood” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
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What is the central focus of Melinda Fagan’s book on stem cell biology?
Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel in the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor of the University of Iowa, and I'm co host of the channel along with Robert Talise of Vanderbilt University. In our bi weekly podcasts we offer interviews with philosophers about their new books in ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, history of philosophy, and many other areas. Today's interview is with Melinda Bonnie Fagan, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rice University. Her new book, Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology Knowledge in Flesh and Blood, is just out from Palgrave Macmillan. and was recently selected as an outstanding academic title by Choice Magazine. Philosophy of science has come a very long way from its historically rooted focus on theories, explanations, and evidential relations in physics, elaborated in terms of a rather mythical theory T.
But even in philosophy of biology, attention has largely been on the concepts and abstract mathematics of evolutionary biology, not the in the trenches work of cell biology. Fagin's book stakes out new ground by examining the interplay of messy, complex experimental manipulation of cells and tissues with the mathematical modeling of cells and their developmental landscapes, and also the interaction between the methods and goals of scientific knowledge production with the practical social goals of developing therapies for use in clinical medicine. She critically examines the basic concepts of stem cell biology, its experimental and collaborative methods and models, and its focus on the search for applications in clinical medicine.
And considers the impact of these features on how we should think in general about scientific evidence, explanation, causality, unification, and the social aspects of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Let's turn to the interview. Hello Melinda. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Hello, Carrie. Thanks so much for
the opportunity to talk to you.
Well, I'm uh I'm really excited to talk about this because so much of it is is a first in philosophy of science, um, because it's you know one of the few books that I know of that kind of addresses head-on the interplay of the sort of messy, complex experiment with cells and tissues, with the you know, sort of clean and abstract math mathematical modeling of of you know cell development landscape. And then of knowledge production practices with practical goals of finding interventions for medical or clinical use. And you know, you you interweave these two things together in a really um fruitful way in terms of thinking about traditional philosophy science topics in you know evidence and explanation and causality and university.
certification and so on. Um so before we get to all the, you know, the messy details of of stem cell biology and it its interplay with philosophy of science in general, um maybe you can say a word about about yourself and your interest in the in the topic and and how you came to write this particular book.
Sure. So The the interweaving you talked about, um, that's really one of the central aims and that comes directly out of my own educational experience. I trained as a biologist before I turned to philosophy. And although I didn't work I wasn't a stem cell researcher, I did a PhD in a stem cell laboratory. And so I spent three years working in close association with stem cell researchers. So I heard a lot about it. I went to lab meetings, I went to their talks and and so I absorbed some just by Proximity in a sense. So I knew about that kind of work. I left the lab before the stem cell field. took on its current configuration. It was right around the time human embryonic stem cells uh were constructed in cell culture that I left biology and went traveling and decided that I wanted to change my intellectual approach, my my career to another kind of work than laboratory work.
But I'd spent uh a number of years in about eight different laboratories. My PhD was from the lab that did stem cell research. And so when I started in philosophy of science, one of the things that struck me was how little transferred from my time my years in the laboratory.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central focus of Melinda Fagan’s book on stem cell biology?
0:06–5:40
2
How did Melinda’s background in biology shape her philosophical approach?
5:40–11:24
3
What are the three overarching themes (interaction, pluralism, unification) in the book?
11:24–18:48
4
How does the book treat the stem‑cell concept as a model rather than a theory?
18:48–26:36
5
Why does the embryonic vs. adult stem‑cell distinction become a red‑herring?
26:36–36:00
6
How are stem‑cell lines comparable to model organisms in experimental biology?
36:00–45:33
7
What role does systems biology play in linking experiments with mathematical models?
45:33–56:29
8
How do clinical therapeutic values influence the scientific identity of stem‑cell research?
56:29–1:09:27
Speakers
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