Hi. I am Brett Calcott, a philosopher of science and a software engineer. My research focuses on how complex biological organisation emerges from simple beginnings.
This website is a space for ideas, models, and arguments about how complex biological form is built and evolved. Much of what you will find has been brewing in some form for over a decade. This is my attempt to corral everything into one place.
The models here are built with a combination of Rust and Python. They are not currently open source, but my plan is to make them available in the future. If you are interested in the code, please get in touch.
The germ of many of these ideas, and the initial models, were developed during postdoctoral positions at the KLI in Vienna, with Paul Griffiths at the University of Sydney, in Joshua Epstein’s group at Johns Hopkins Centre for Emergency Medicine, and at the Centre for Biology and Society, ASU with Manfred Laubichler. I’m grateful to these people and institutions, and to many others who supported me during my embryonic stages in philosophy. I’m especially indebted to Kim Sterelny, who kick–started my interest in these ideas, and supported my early academic career.