Astrid Modera

Master en philosophie, orientation philosophie des sciences (2017)

Astrid Modera is a doctoral candidate and an assistant in the Department of Sciences, Philosophies and Societies at UNamur. She graduated in Philosophy from the Université catholique de Louvain in 2017 and her dissertation was about reduction and emergence in quantum chemistry. Her ongoing research focuses on the philosophy of biology, especially the famous question of what life is. This work requires biological inquiries and philosophical reflections about what makes living beings different from non-living entities. Trying to respond to that significant question means focusing on philosophical theories such as emergence, reduction, mechanism and, of course, vitalism. In so doing this thesis seeks to challenge Rosen’s vision that relationships could be the huge difference we are looking for. The main idea of this vision is summed up in the concept of relational biology, formalized by Rosen thanks to the theory of Categories.

As a teaching assistant, she trains medicine, pharmacy and biomedical sciences students to read and understand texts about philosophy and ethics. She also supervises vet students on group work.

Furthemore, she’s also the creator of the “Lunch de la philo”, meetings which privilege critical discusssions of phylosophy between undergaduate philosophy students and doctoral candidates in philosophy.

Organisation des Lunchs de la Philo