Gennaro Auletta (born August 19, 1957 in Naples, Italy) is an Italian philosopher of science actively involved in scientific research.
He is also active in the field of the dialogue between science, philosophy and theology, and has been the Vice-Director of the international conference on Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories, held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in March 2009.
He is an Aggregate Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University where, from 2003 to 2012, held the position of Scientific Director of the Specialization in Science and Philosophy.
In particular, Auletta is interested in the relevance of notions like information control, functional equivalence class, formal constraints and top-down causation as to the organisms’ capability of dealing with a challenging environment at the ontogenetic and epigenetic levels, eventually leading to the emergence of new biological functionalities at the phylogenetic level.
Top-down causation mechanisms via information control may be considered as the way in which initial and random perturbations disturbing the homeostasis of an organism are subsequently framed in the organism’s network of formal constraints thus giving raise to a process of fine-tuning that ends up in an eventual stable form able to realize a new adaptive fit with certain environmental conditions and challenges.