ArticleHistory and philosophy of the life sciences2024
Scrutinizing microbiome determinism: why deterministic hypotheses about the microbiome are conceptually ungrounded.
Article in History and philosophy of the life sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
This paper addresses the topic of determinism in contemporary microbiome research. I distinguish two types of deterministic claims about the microbiome, and I show evidence that both types of claims are present in the contemporary literature. First, the idea that the host genetics determines the composition of the microbiome which I call "host-microbiome determinism". Second, the idea that the genetics of the holobiont (the individual unit composed by a host plus its microbiome) determines the expression of certain phenotypic traits, which I call "microbiome-phenotype determinism". Drawing on the stability of traits conception of individuality (Suárez in Hist Philos Life Sci 42:11, 2020) I argue that none of these deterministic hypotheses is grounded on our current knowledge of how the holobiont is transgenerationally assembled, nor how it expresses its phenotypic traits.
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