Does evolution even have a mechanism?
| Abstract | Evolutionary biology teaches that all biological complexity is the result of material mechanisms. These include principally the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation, but also include other mechanisms (symbiosis, gene transfer, genetic drift, the action of regulatory genes in development, self-organizational processes, etc.). These mechanisms are just that: mindless material mechanisms that do what they do irrespective of intelligence. To be sure, mechanisms can be programmed by an intelligence. But any such intelligent programming of evolutionary mechanisms is not properly part of evolutionary biology. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,679 |
| External links |
|
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Paul Churchland (2009). Is Evolutionary Naturalism Epistemologically Self-Defeating. Philo 12 (2):135-141.
Stephen M. Downes (2010). The Basic Components of the Human Mind Were Not Solidified During the Pleistocene Epoch. In Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology. Wiley-Blackwell Pub..
Jason M. Baker (2005). Adaptive Speciation: The Role of Natural Selection in Mechanisms of Geographic and Non-Geographic Speciation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 36 (2):303-326.
Robert A. Skipper & Roberta L. Millstein (2005). Thinking About Evolutionary Mechanisms: Natural Selection. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):327-347.
Jason M. Byron (2005). Adaptive Speciation: The Role of Natural Selection in Mechanisms of Geographic and Non-Geographic Speciation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):303-326.
D. Benjamin Barros (2008). Natural Selection as a Mechanism. Philosophy of Science 75 (3):306-322.
Daniel J. Nicholson (2012). The Concept of Mechanism in Biology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C 43 (1):152-163.
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads8 ( #123,092 of 549,087 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,317 of 549,087 )How can I increase my downloads? |

