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Séminaire

Lundi 23 Septembre 2024
11h30
Centre de recherche - Paris - Amphithéâtre Hélène Martel-Massignac (BDD)

Why immunologists have no other choice but to do conceptual & theoretical immunology

In this talk, I argue that immunologists who do not think conceptually and theoretically are very unlikely to make useful contributions to their own field.
In a first part, I make three points. First, theories have been crucial in immunology since its inception at the end of the 19th century. Second, theories guide what we think and what we do, experimentally and therapeutically. Third, those who consider that they don’t need theoretical thinking are prisoners of tacit theoretical frameworks.
In a second part, I present some of my modest proposals to develop conceptual and theoretical frameworks in immunology over the last ten years. I try to assess the extent to which this work has proved scientifically useful.
This talk reflects both my huge reservations as to where mainstream immunology is currently heading and my hopes that more and more immunologists will embrace its powerful conceptual and theoretical tradition.

Orateur(s)

Thomas Pradeu
Tenured Senior Investigator (DR1) in Philosophy of Science, the University of Bordeaux

CNRS

Invité(e)(s) par

Hélène Moreau

Institut Curie

Ana-Maria Lennon

Institut Curie

Contact

Sylvia Trival

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En bref

Thomas Pradeu is a tenured Senior Investigator (DR1) in Philosophy of Science at CNRS & the University of Bordeaux, France, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, California, USA. He is the founder and leader of the Conceptual Biology and Medicine team in Bordeaux, and the coordinator of the Philosophy in Biology and Medicine international network (PhilInBioMed). From 2008 to 2014, he was an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne University. Starting from 2014, he became an “embedded philosopher” in the Bordeaux immunology lab (ImmunoConcept). From 2015 to 2020, he was the PI of an ERC Starting Grant project on the microbiome and biological individuality. In 2020-21, he was a CASBS Fellow at Stanford University. His research, published equally in science and philosophy of science journals, deals with immunology, cancer biology, and the microbiome, and more generally with the conceptual and theoretical foundations of today’s biological and biomedical sciences. His work in the field of conceptual and theoretical immunology has explored the immune self-nonself, immunological memory, the danger theory, the discontinuity theory, the crosstalk between the microbiome and the immune system, among many other issues. He collaborates with many scientists, including Eric Vivier, Gérard Eberl, Sören Paludan, Rob Knight, Margaret McFall-Ngai, Louis Du Pasquier, and Bruno Lemaitre. In 2017, he was awarded the Lakatos Award, the most prestigious award in philosophy of science internationally.

En savoir plus

Some publications:
Pradeu T, Thomma BPHJ, Girardin SE, Lemaitre B (2024) The conceptual foundations of innate immunity: Taking stock 30 years later. Immunity 57:613–631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2024.03.007
Pradeu T et al (2023) Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research. Biological Reviews 98:1668–1686. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12971
Pradeu T (2019) Philosophy of Immunology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (Open access)
- Laplane L… Pradeu T. (2019) Why science needs philosophy. PNAS 116:3948–3952. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900357116
Pradeu T, Du Pasquier L (2018) Immunological memory: What’s in a name? Immunol Rev 283:7–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/imr.12652
- Eberl G, Pradeu T (2018) Towards a General Theory of Immunity? Trends in Immunology 39:261–263. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.it.2017.11.004
Pradeu T, Jaeger S, Vivier E (2013) The speed of change: towards a discontinuity theory of immunity? Nat Rev Immunol 13:764–769. https://doi.org/10.1038/nri3521