Our group is recognized as a world-leading group of philosophers of science working in close contact with science and medicine. We are indeed "embedded" in a biology and medicine lab (at the CNRS and Bordeaux hospital), and we participate intensively in all lab's activities. This is what we call philosophy "in" science (in contrast with traditional philosophy "of" science). We bring our conceptual, theoretical, and philosophical insights into scientific projects, and contribute to the emergence of new experimental questions and investigations. Building on this expertise, we have launched a national and international network promoting what we have called "Philosophy in Biology and Medicine" (rather than the more classical philosophy "of" biology and medicine) (website:
https://www.philinbiomed.org/(s’ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)). Very few groups in the world have reached this degree of tight connection between philosophy and science. Our work on the microbiota, the immune system, microbiology and other biological and medical aspects is often published in science journals and it is discussed and cited by scientists; to that extent, it has the quite unique feature of contributing and making a difference to science itself.
In the final phase of the project, we did exciting research on the microbiome-immune-cancer connection, a fascinating emerging issue in the biomedical sciences. We teamed up with two of the best experts in the world, both at UCSD (California) and respectively first and last authors on a paper published in the journal Nature in 2020.
Overall, what we are most proud of is this constant, intimate and fruitful interaction with scientists and MDs. We have the feeling that such a degree of cross-fertilization between scientific and philosophical work is rare, and that this achievement has been perfectly recognized by our community. The IDEM project allowed our group to really be on the world map from this point of view.
