and physical geographers, both historically
and today (see Spencer and Whatmore,
2001).
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, biogeography was a focus of analy-
sis across disciplines such asgeography, an-
thropology and archaeology, both for those
concerned with the development of human
societies and for those concerned with the
distribution and viability ofanimalor plant
populations. Cultural geographers such as
Carl Sauer, for example, framed their ac-
counts of societal development in terms of
the ecological fabric of a region or landscape
in which it was situated (see berkeley
school). While these concerns fell from fa-
vour incultural geographyas divisions be-
tween natural and social science perspectives
and practices became more entrenched (see
environmental determinism), they have
gained new impetus from the popular science
writing of sociobiologists such as Jared Dia-
mond, in his account of the connections be-
tween the social and ecological collapse in the
historical demise of any number ofciviliza-
tions(Diamond and LeCroy, 1979). As a
result, for much of the late twentieth century
biogeography became, in effect, a sub-
specialty within physical geography,as
represented by the leading academic publi-
cation, theJournal of Biogeography. This sub-
discipline has fared unevenly in the research
agendas and teaching curricula of the discip-
line in different parts of the world.
In its twenty-first century incarnation,
biogeography has regained its status as a gen-
erative common ground that takes life as its
central concern, inspired by two currents (see
Thrift, 2005a). The first of these is the rise of
the life sciences and their potency in reworking
the genetic fabric of living kinds, including
humankind. The second is a renewed interest
in the resources ofbiophilosophythat in-
forms academic and popular concerns about
the social and ecological implications of the
biotechnologies that are proliferating at the
interface between life and computer sciences
(see Greenhough and Roe, 2006). Between
the policy investment in biodiversity and the
intellectual re-investment in the question of
life, biogeography has become an important
focus of transdisciplinary work between social
and natural scientists. sw
Suggested reading
Diamond (1979); Greenhough and Roe (2006);
Quamen (1996); Spencer and Whatmore (2001);
Thrift (2005).
biophilosophy A term associated with a
long history of deliberations in Western
thought from Aristotle, through natural his-
tory and evolutionary theory to post-genomic
biology, on the question ‘What is life?’
(Margulis and Sagan, 2000). Two aspects of
these deliberations are particularly influential
today in academic – and, to some extent,
popular – debates about the always urgent
business of living. The first is thephilosophy
of biology (or the philosophy of organism), in
which theoretical biologists and philosophers
since the nineteenth century have been con-
cerned with elucidating the principles of
organization that characterize life informed
by the changing practices and paradigms of
biological knowledge (see Doyle, 1997).
These principles primarily concern the pro-
cesses of growth, decay, reproduction, devel-
opment andadaptation. Here, the question
‘What is life?’ is frequently articulated as an
epistemological question about how and
why the study of biology (living things) differs
from other fields of study.
Biophilosophy, on the other hand, repre-
sents a critique of the philosophy of biology
in the sense that it is more interested in pos-
ing the same question inontologicalterms
that interrogate the precarious register of ‘life’
as a means of thinking past human/animal/
machine categorical divisions. In this, it is
less concerned with describing the universal
essence of life than with tracing through
its ceaseless multiplicity. Here, the focus
is on thenetworkof relations that always
take the living organism outside itself and
the morphogenic impulses of replication and
differentiation, multiplicity and singularity
through which the flux of worldly becomings
takes, holds and changes shape. It is now
most closely associated with a ‘vitalist’ cur-
rent that runs through Leibniz and Spinoza,
Bergson and Whitehead to Deleuze (see
Ansell-Pearson, 1999), and is concerned
with the life force that ‘insinuates itself
into the habits and repetitions of matter with-
out becoming contained by materiality’
(Bergson, 1983 [1907], p. 126). This is one
of a number of important threads weaving
throughnon-representational theorythat
has become so influential ingeographyand
other social sciences over the past five
years or so. swSuggested reading
Ansell-Pearson (1999); Bergson (1983 [1907]);
Doyle (1997); Margulis and Sagan (2000);
Whitehead (1929).Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_B Final Proof page 47 31.3.2009 11:01amBIOPHILOSOPHY