in Essays in Honor of Jack Haddox. eds Carlos Sanchez and Jules Simon (Edwin Mellen Press) (forthcoming)
While Jack Haddox’s mature philosophical work emphasizes humanistic themes and existential concerns, his earliest major project in philosophy; his 1959 dissertation at Notre Dame: Reasons for the Importance of a Philosophical Study of Some of the Basic Principles of the Living World, was a detailed analysis of the methodology of biological investigation. The dissertation examined case studies involving enzymes, proteins, catalysis and other matters apparently far removed from his later work on Mexican and Chicano thought. However, Haddox’s existential engagement with basic philosophical questions is evident throughout this work.
This essay describes the argument of the dissertation and attempts to place it in its historical context. Along the way, I will critically examine the general perspective that Haddox, and many other philosophers of biologists who followed in the ensuing decades adopted. Specifically, I will offer a criticism of the notion that specific teleological presuppositions ought to guide the biologist’s methodology.