Backwards in Retrospect

Philosophical Studies 172 (3):813-821 (2015)
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Abstract

In the title chapter of Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?, Sober argues for an asymmetry between facts about genealogy and facts about natural selection, which has the result that evidentially Darwin's book is the wrong way round. Here I make three points about Sober's argument in that chapter. First, it is not clear that Darwin employs what Sober calls 'tree thinking' as frequently as Sober himself suggests. Second, I argue that Darwin's reason for structuring the Origin as he did can be understood if we think of the Origin's argument as an inference to the best explanation. Third, I show circumstances where, even if selection is the only important evolutionary force, we would still be able to infer common ancestry

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Tim Lewens
Cambridge University

Citations of this work

Similarities as Evidence for Common Ancestry: A Likelihood Epistemology.Elliott Sober & Mike Steel - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3):617-638.

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References found in this work

On the origin of species.Charles Darwin - 1964 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Gillian Beer.
Philosophy of Biology.Elliott Sober - 1993 - Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
The Structure and Strategy of Darwin's ‘Long Argument’.M. J. S. Hodge - 1977 - British Journal for the History of Science 10 (3):237-246.
Darwin.Tim Lewens - 2005 - New York: Routledge.
Charles Darwin's Beagle diary.Charles Darwin - 1933 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by R. D. Keynes.

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