The Society for the History and Epistemology of the Life Sciences is pleased to announce its 31st annual meeting, which will be held at Université Paris Cité from Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 May 2026.
The meeting will be devoted to the theme “The Territories of Genetics: New Perspectives.”
Rationale
Alongside the “Darwinian industry,” genetics is the second major domain within the life sciences to have generated an abundant historiography since the 1960s–1970s and the institutionalization of the history of biology, as evidenced, for example, by the entries in the Journal of the History of Biology. This has led to a considerable enrichment of our knowledge concerning some of the most central topics, including (without claiming exhaustiveness): the place of Mendel’s work and the context of its “rediscovery” in 1900; the rise of so-called classical genetics during the first decade of the twentieth century; the establishment of the chromosomal theory of heredity; eugenics; and the founding of molecular genetics.
Many of these studies have also been conducted from a comparative perspective, which has made it possible to reveal local “styles” in the ways genetics developed throughout the past century. Alongside this continuous deepening of historiographical knowledge, the same period (from the 1970s to the present) has also witnessed the emergence of a markedly more critical and normative discourse on genetics, carried by numerous disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. Genetics has not only been taken as an object of study; it has also been called into question. In the philosophy of science, in particular, the concept of the gene has been subjected to multiple critiques, with some philosophers even predicting its impending obsolescence and arguing for the legitimacy of its abandonment.
Similarly, the “geno-centrism” of evolutionary theory has itself been the object of a literature that is both abundant and heterogeneous (as evidenced by the many works associated with the “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis”). These repeated critiques of genetic reductionism have not been without effect on historiography itself, particularly in how it has approached the (Mendelian) birth of genetics. In doing so, it sometimes seems to be forgotten that if the twentieth century was indeed the century of the gene, this is first and foremost because genetics profoundly transformed most biological disciplines, in a manner comparable to the impact of cell theory in the nineteenth century.
The aim of the study day (20 May), and more broadly of the theme chosen for the SHESVIE conference (21–22 May), will be to explore, in all their historical richness and depth, the territories—both theoretical and empirical—that were effectively transformed by the genetic approach. As we shall see, these territories were highly diverse, which explains why genetics so often appears as a science that calls for qualification of its domain of application: molecular genetics, developmental genetics, population genetics, human genetics, and so on. In this respect, the concept of the gene seems to have functioned much like that of the cell at the end of the nineteenth century, when something like a “cellularization” of the biological disciplines occurred: anatomy, physiology, and embryology (among others) became cellular at that time. It is very likely that a movement of this kind has been unfolding throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day—a general movement whose meaning this conference seeks to reactivate on the basis of multiple specialized studies.
Call for Papers
In addition to contributions directly related to the conference theme, the organizing committee also invites the submission of varia papers. These will provide scholars in epistemology and the history of the life sciences with the opportunity to present their ongoing research.
📌 Proposals must be submitted to contact@shesvie.fr.
📅 Submission deadline: 30 January 2026.
Paper proposals (between 3,000 and 5,000 characters, including spaces) should include:
The conference will be held primarily in French, but papers in English may also be accepted.
We look forward to welcoming you to the conference.
The Organizing Committee:
Laurent Loison, Stéphane Tirard, Claire Grino, Louise Couëffé, Thomas Bonnin
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