This volume explores the interactions between organisms and their environments and how this
entanglement is a fundamental aspect of all life. It brings together the work and ideas of
historians philosophers biologists and social scientists uniting a range of new
perspectives methods and frameworks for examining and understanding the ways that organisms
and environments interact. The volume is organized into three main sections: historical
perspectives contested models and emerging frameworks. The first section explores the origins
of the modern idea of organism-environment interaction in the mid-nineteenth century and its
development by later psychologists and anthropologists. In the second section a variety of
controversial models-from mathematical representations of evolution to model organisms in
medical research-are discussed and reframed in light of recent questions about the interplay
between organisms and environment. The third section investigates several new ideas that have
the potential to reshape key aspects of the biological and social sciences. Populations of
organisms evolve in response to changing environments bodies and minds depend on a wide array
of circumstances for their development cultures create complex relationships with the natural
world even as they alter it irrevocably. The chapters in this volume share a commitment to
unraveling the mysteries of this entangled life.
