CORTEX Student Club by Bertrand Beffara and Benjamin Guinet

Theoretical arguments from Biology in favor of Integrating Endogenous and Exogenous Concepts

In science, making categories and conceptualizing are common intellectual tools that allow to better approach reality. However, as it has become a prevailing way of doing science, it is now possible to be fooled by our own way of constructing knowledge because of focusing on prevailing and traditional theories, thus ousting new, counter intuitive and innovative scientific contributions. In this vein, to distinguish what is endogenous from what is exogenous has paved the way to a substantial number of discoveries allowing the understanding of biological principles. Here, we applied the novelty-friendly advice from P. Feyerabend in Against Method to the endogenous/exogenous dichotomy and gathered experimental and theoretical evidence from various fields of biology. This brought us to argue that reconstructing theoretical frameworks now integrating ’endogenous’ and ’exogenous’ concepts is of great interest to further understand biology.