Dr. Boris Demarest

deutsche Version 

Contact Details

Philosophisches Seminar – Room 1.19
Heidelberg University
Schulgasse 6
D-69117 Heidelberg
E-mail: boris.demarest[at]uni-heidelberg.de
Tel.: +49 6221 54 2484

Office Hours

Appointment only

Teaching and Research

History of Philosophy, especially Kant and early modern philosophy
History and Philosophy of Science, especially of the life sciences
History of Philosophy of Science

My current research concerns the role of the pre-modern concept of “nature”, and the concomitant oppositions between the natural and the supernatural, the natural and the counter- or preternatural, and the natural and the artificial in early modern metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of nature. The core idea behind this project is that such distinctions continued to play a central role in early modern thought, in spite of the many criticisms to which early modern thinkers subjected them. Recognizing the persistent role of this concept of nature can yield an important reassessment of the early modern conception of science and scientific inquiry.

This project relates to two other major partly overlapping research foci of mine. One is my interest in the history, development, and current relevance of philosophical and scientific conceptions of the nature of the living and the organic, as well as of their place in nature. The main reasons for this interest is the light this history can shed on specific problems faced by the (philosophy of the) life sciences and on general philosophical concerns over the meaning of the life sciences for our image of science and scientific inquiry as a whole. The other research focus concerns the history and development of our image of science and scientific inquiry.

Recent Publications

Demarest, B. (2021). “Soul, Archeus, and Nature in van Helmont's Medical Naturalism”. HOPOS 11(2): 564-584.
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/715877

Demarest, B. (2020). “Spontaneous Generation in Early Modern Philosophy and Science”. In: Jalobeanu D., Wolfe C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_310-1

Bognon-Küss C., Demarest B. (2020) “Intussusception”. In: Jalobeanu D., Wolfe C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_547-1

Demarest B. (2020) “Epigenesis”. In: Jalobeanu D., Wolfe C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_281-1

McLaughlin P., Demarest B. (2020) “Newtonianism and the Life Sciences”. In: Jalobeanu D., Wolfe C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_98-1

Demarest B. (2020) “Harvey, William”. In: Jalobeanu D., Wolfe C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham
    https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_289-1

Demarest, B. (2019). “Charles Wolfe, La philosophie de la biologie avant la biologie. Une histoire du vitalisme”. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41(38).
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-019-0276-8

Demarest, B. (2019). “The New Axiomatic Method: Bachelard on the Meaning and Deformation of Concepts”, Parrhesia 31: 207-231.
    https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia31/parrhesia31_demarest.pdf

Demarest, B. (2017) “Kant’s Epigenesis: Specificity and Developmental Constraints”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 39:3.

    https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-017-0129-2

Demarest, B. & Wolfe, C. T. (2017) "The organism as reality or as fiction: Buffon and beyond", History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 39:2.
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-016-0128-8

Courses taught at Heidelberg University

Funktion und Dysfunktion. (Hauptseminar Sommersemester 2022)

Mensch und Tier (Proseminar Sommersemester 2022)

Kant: Die Antinomie der reinen Vernunft. (Hauptseminar, Wintersemester 2021-2022)

Wissen und Wissenschaft bei Locke. Versuch über den menschlichen Verstand Buch 4. (Proseminar, Wintersemester 2021-2022)

Early Modern Women's Voices on Substance, Causation, and the Mind-Body Problem. (Forschungskolloquium, Sommersemester 2021)

Anschauung und Begriff. Die transzendentale Ästhetik und die transzendentale Analytik der Begriffe in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft. (Hauptseminar, Sommersemester 2021)

Descartes‘ Meditationen. Eine Einführung in die Philosophie der frühen Neuzeit. (Proseminar, Sommersemester 2021)

Wissenschaftliche Erklärungen (Hauptseminar, Wintersemester 2020-2021)

Humes Untersuchung über den menschlichen Verstand (Proseminar, Wintersemester 2020-2021)

Leibniz und Locke über Ideen: Leibniz‘ Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand und der Rationalismus-Empirismus-Gegensatz (Hauptseminar, Sommersemester 2020)

Die Natur und die Entwicklung der Wissenschaft. Eine Einführung in die Wissenschaftsphilosophie (Proseminar, Sommersemester 2020)

Kants Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft (Hauptseminar, Wintersemester 2019-2020)

Die mechanistische Philosophie im 17. Jahrhundert (Proseminar, Wintersemester 2019-2020)

Spinoza: theoretische Philosophie (Hauptseminar, Sommersemester 2019)

Leibniz: theoretische Philosophie (Proseminar, Sommersemester 2019)

Philosophy of Biology (Hauptseminar, Wintersemester 2018-2019)

Französische historische Epistemologie (Proseminar, Wintersemester 2018-2019)

Curriculum Vitae

PhD, Ghent University, 2016
Docent, University of Amsterdam, 2016-2018
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Heidelberg University, 2018-