The purpose of this course is to introduce students to some of the key conceptual developments in the history and philosophy of science and technology. History of science and philosophy of science tend to operate at a distant remove from each other: they often employ different methodologies to address different kinds of questions. The objective of this course is to carve out common ground in which historians and philosophers may productively engage with one another, and at the same time to survey various issues in the history and philosophy of biology. We will do this in an unorthodox way. We will focus on the 'problem of the organism.' Organisms, of course, are the subject matter of biology. They are at the same time problematic sorts of natural phenomena. We will the changing approaches to understanding (or ignoring) organisms throughout the history of biology, as a lens through which to discuss issues in the philosophy of science such as explanation, the metaphysics of science, experiment, modelling, laws of nature.