Pierrick Bourrat (2022 online; 2025 in print). “Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality by Endogenization of Scaffolded Properties.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 76(2): 269–294. DOI-10.1086/719118.
Key takeaways
Seeded from the citing paper, not read. As LIT-188 reports it: Bourrat distinguishes Darwinian individuality, which needs heritable variation in fitness plus internal individualizing mechanisms (after Clarke), from Darwinian-like individuality conferred by an ecological scaffold. A scaffolded collective becomes a Darwinian individual by endogenizing its scaffolded features, bringing them “inside the individual” so that its resilience to perturbation no longer needs outside help. Releasing an unendogenized collective from its scaffold de-Darwinizes it.
Standing in the record
Registered on 2026-11-01 from the re-reading of LIT-188 (NOTE-173). Griesemer and Shavit endorse its scaffolding and endogenization account and relocate endogenization “into the community rather than into a lower-level individual” (§2). The record’s question about it is whether endogenization can serve as a criterion of individuality without a boundary declared in advance (CLAIM-522, CLAIM-194, CLAIM-529). A reading should check how the paper states the release test, since that test needs a declared inside and outside. Bourrat’s later paper on reproducers is held as LIT-157.