In some ways, questions concerning individuality and evolutionary transitions in individuality appear to be uniquely biological. However, many of the underlying concerns regarding the enduring status of collectives and the emergence of higher-level individuals can also be found in other contexts — including broader biological settings (such as the emergence of coordinated behaviour in animal collectives) and non-biological ones (such as hierarchical structures in materials science).

Here, Patrick examines the extent to which questions concerning biological individuality and transitions in individuality can be clarified by comparing them with questions relating to other types of transition in natural systems — in particular, phase transitions in physical systems and the emergence of mesoscale structures in multiscale systems.

Patrick McGivern is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wollongong. He specialises in philosophy of science, philosophy of cognition and philosophy of medicine. In philosophy of science, he focuses primarily on problems of explanation and modelling in science, and on related questions about emergence, reduction, and other inter-theoretic relations. These problems arise in physics, chemistry, neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, ecology and many other areas of science.