Title Pending 10487

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.In the early 1960, architect and urban Constantinos Doxiadis (1913 – 1975) envisioned the city of the future to be "a continuous network of centres." In order to explain and validate this urban schema, Doxiadis pointed towards the biological logic of neurons, in opposition to the centralized logic of a growing tree. Architect Kenzo Tange synchronously envisioned the city as an extended brain: "Large metropolitan areas or megalopolises in our day are becoming the brains for the body of modern society."This article follows the biological metaphors in recurrent circulation at the Delos symposion, an annual week-long architecture and urbanism symposia, convened by Doxiadis, taking place at a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea between 1963 and 1975. The biological metaphors surfacing in the discussions, originated in recent developments in cybernetics and systems biology. Biologist Conrad Hal Waddington (1905 – 1975), who attended all ten Delos gatherings, was a pioneer of these new developments. At Delos he discussed how his ground-breaking theory of epigenetics would change how we build, plan, and inhabit buildings and cities. Focusing on Waddington's contributions to the Delos symposion, I firstly discuss Doxiadis' ekistic theory in relation to Waddington's epigenetic theory. Then, the article shows how the Delos discussions laid critical foundations for a redefinition of the biological self. In conclusion, I argue that this orientation resonates with current epistemological debates in the humanities.