Abstract
The latter half of thetwentieth century has been marked by debates inevolutionary biology over the relativesignificance of natural selection and randomdrift: the so-called ``neutralist/selectionist''debates. Yet John Beatty has argued that it isdifficult, if not impossible, to distinguishthe concept of random drift from the concept ofnatural selection, a claim that has beenaccepted by many philosophers of biology. Ifthis claim is correct, then theneutralist/selectionist debates seem at bestfutile, and at worst, meaningless. I reexaminethe issues that Beatty raises, and argue thatrandom drift and natural selection, conceivedas processes, can be distinguished from one another.
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Millstein, R.L. Are Random Drift and Natural Selection Conceptually Distinct?. Biology & Philosophy 17, 33–53 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012990800358
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012990800358