Skip to main content
Log in

Has Grafen formalized Darwin?

Commentary on Grafen’s ‘The Formal Darwinism project in outline’

Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

One key aim of Grafen’s Formal Darwinism project is to formalize ‘modern biology’s understanding and updating of Darwin’s central argument’. In this commentary, I consider whether Grafen has succeeded in this aim.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Page references, unless stated otherwise, refer to Grafen’s target article, ‘The Formal Darwinism project in outline’.

  2. Though, interestingly, chemists do tend to describe these rearrangements in intentional terms. So perhaps there really is a link between ‘solving an optimization programme’ with respect to intrinsic structural properties and inviting certain forms of intentional language (for more detailed discussion of this issue, see Birch 2012).

  3. Compare Dawkins (1986, 21): ‘We may say that a living body or organ is well designed if it has attributes that an intelligent and knowledgeable engineer might have built in order to achieve some sensible purpose, such as flying, swimming, seeing, eating, reproducing, or more generally promoting the survival and reproduction of the organism’s genes.’ In invoking the notion of a ‘sensible purpose’, Dawkins introduces an anthropocentric element to the definition of design that may well be unavoidable. Lewens (2005) makes a similar point.

  4. See, for example, Kelemen (1999, 2004). For studies regarding projections of purpose and design in adults, see Lombrozo and Carey (2006), Kelemen and Carey (2007), Kelemen and Rosset (2009). Judgements about apparent design seem to vary across cultures (Casler and Kelemen 2008), and in general children attribute purpose and design far more promiscuously than adults (Kelemen 1999).

References

  • Birch J (2012) Robust processes and teleological language. Eur J Philos Sci 3:299–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casler K, Kelemen D (2008) Developmental continuity in teleo-functional explanation: reasoning about nature in Romanian Romani adults. J Cogn Dev 9:340–362

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin C (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins R (1986) The blind watchmaker: why the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design. W. W. Norton & Company, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1995) Darwin’s dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life. Simon & Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Grafen A (2007) The formal Darwinism project: a mid-term report. J Evol Biol 20:1243–1254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelemen D (1999) The scope of teleological thinking in preschool children. Cognition 70:241–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelemen D (2004) Are children ‘intuitive theists’? Purpose and intelligent design in children’s reasoning about nature. Psychol Sci 15:295–301

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelemen D, Carey S (2007) The essence of artifacts: developing the design stance. In: Laurence S, Margolis E (eds) Creations of the mind: theories of artifacts and their representation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 212–230

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelemen D, Rosset E (2009) The human function compunction: teleological explanation in adults. Cognition 111:138–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewens T (2005) The problems of biological design. R Inst Philos Suppl 56:177–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Lombrozo T, Carey S (2006) Functional explanation and the function of explanation. Cognition 99:167–204

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sober E (2011) Did Darwin write the Origin backwards?. Prometheus, Amherst

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Anthony Edwards, Warren Ewens, Rufus Johnstone, Tim Lewens, Samir Okasha, Cedric Paternotte and John Welch for their extensive and very helpful comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Birch.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Birch, J. Has Grafen formalized Darwin?. Biol Philos 29, 175–180 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9421-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9421-z

Keywords

Navigation