Individuals as ecosystems: an essential tension

The notion of individual as irreducible uniqueness has become an important epistemological device for modern evolutionary theory. At the same time different disciplinary tools, honed by constant technological innovation, have redefined in their turn the biological boundaries of what is understood as “individual”. In examining the constitutive role of “individual” (e.g. its theory making in population genetics), as well the problematic meaning of the concept (one composed by many), we may observe epistemic transfers of entities, whose philosophical depth is here the issue