Natural selection and history
Biology and Philosophy 24 (2):231-246 (2009)
| Abstract | In “Spandrels,” Gould and Lewontin criticized what they took to be an all-too-common conviction, namely, that adaptation to current environments determines organic form. They stressed instead the importance of history . In this paper, we elaborate upon their concerns by appealing to other writings in which those issues are treated in greater detail. Gould and Lewontin’s combined emphasis on history was three-fold. First, evolution by natural selection does not start from scratch, but always refashions preexisting forms. Second, preexisting forms are refashioned by the selection of whatever mutational variations happen to arise: the historical order of mutations needs to be taken into account. Third, the order of environments and selection pressures also needs to be taken into account. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,711 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesPablo Razeto-Barry & Ramiro Frick (2011). Probabilistic Causation and the Explanatory Role of Natural Selection. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 42 (3):344-355.
Robert N. Brandon (1999). The Units of Selection Revisited: The Modules of Selection. Biology and Philosophy 14 (2).
Timothy Shanahan (2004). The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge University Press.
Jerry A. Fodor (2010). What Darwin Got Wrong. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Robert Brandon, Natural Selection. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Toru Shimizu (2006). Brain Evolution by Natural Selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (1):23-24.
Mohan Matthen & André Ariew (2009). Selection and Causation. Philosophy of Science 76 (2):201-224.
Jerry Fodor (2008). Against Darwinism. Mind and Language 23 (1):1–24.
Mohan Matthen & André Ariew (2009). Selection and Causation. Philosophy of Science 76 (2):201-224.
John Beatty (1984). Chance and Natural Selection. Philosophy of Science 51 (2):183-211.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads62 ( #15,172 of 551,112 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,341 of 551,112 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
