History of biology and bioethics

The main goal of this module will be to provide a better understanding of the major concepts of modern biology, through the history of their development. In other words, to analyze the intellectual path as well as the experimental and theoretical approaches that led to their construction. For example, we will analyze how the search for a "natural" classification led Jean-Baptiste Monet de Lamarck and Charles Darwin to lay the foundations of evolutionary biology or how the concept of "unity of organization plan" by Etienne Geoffroy Saint Hilaire is at the origin of evolutionary paleontology, developmental biology and evolution/development (Evo/Devo).

Within the framework of bioethical aspects, the problems of the drift of a concept (from craniology to eugenics) or the cases of "Georges Cuvier" and "Trophim Lyssenko" when religious or political ideology interferes with science will be addressed.

Finally, biological philosophy will lead us to discuss the interest of models in biology and the "end of the genetic whole" (from Lamarck to epigenetics through epigenesis).

The whole module will be done through lectures during which some founding texts of modern biology will also be analyzed and discussed.

- To better understand the major concepts of biology (cell theory, taxonomy, evolution, comparative anatomy, developmental biology, evo/devo, genetics/epigenetics...) through the history of ideas.

- To better understand the practices and issues of research in biology (interest of biological models, drift of concepts, scientific ethics, transdisciplinarity).

- To acquire notions of biological epistemology

basic knowledge of cellular and molecular biology and/or organism biology.