@ARTICLE{10.21494/ISTE.OP.2022.0790, TITLE={What is speculative biology?}, AUTHOR={Jean-Claude Dupont, }, JOURNAL={Art and Science}, VOLUME={6}, NUMBER={Special issue}, YEAR={2022}, URL={https://www.openscience.fr/What-is-speculative-biology}, DOI={10.21494/ISTE.OP.2022.0790}, ISSN={2515-8767}, ABSTRACT={Starting from Georges Chapouthier’s exercise, the article proposes a brief history of the imaginary of living beings up to speculative biology. At first unbridled, this imagination meets the biological sciences in the 19th century, which impose constraints on the extraterrestrial creatures of science fiction stories. Later, speculative biology will consist in systematically imagining the properties of possible extraterrestrial living entities by analogy with those of terrestrial life, taking into account plausible physical constraints and the knowledge of biology. Even if it cannot be an academic discipline, speculative biology is a rigorous approach, as well as a multiform artistic practice.}}