Universal Darwinism: Its Scope and Limits
In James Maclaurin (ed.), Defensor Rationes: Essays in Honour of Colin Cheyne. Springer (2012)
| Abstract | Many things evolve: species, languages, sports, tools, biological niches, and theories. But are these real instances of natural selection? Current assessments of the proper scope of Darwinian theory focus on the broad similarity of cultural or non-organic processes to familiar central instances of natural selection. That similarity is analysed in terms of abstract functional descriptions of evolving entities (e.g. replicators, interactors, developmental systems etc). These strategies have produced a proliferation of competing evolutionary analyses. I argue that such reasoning ought not to be employed in arbitrating debates about whether particular phenomena count as instances of natural selection. My argument is based on hierarchical functional descriptions of natural selection. I suggest that natural selection ought not to be thought of as a single process but rather as a series of processes which can be analysed in terms of a hierarchy of functional descriptions (in much the same way as many people think of cognition). This, in turn, casts doubt on the idea that it is possible in principle to settle debates about whether particular phenomena count as instances of natural selection. | |||||||||
| Keywords | Universal Darwinism scope inheritance | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,631 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJoeri Witteveen (2009). Darwinism About Darwinism. [REVIEW] Biological Theory 4 (2):207-213.
Timothy Shanahan (2004). The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge University Press.
Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (1996). Natural Selection and Self-Organization. Biology and Philosophy 11 (1):33-65.
Massimo Pigliucci (2009). Review of Peter Godfrey-Smith, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. [REVIEW] Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (8).
Jerry Fodor (2008). Against Darwinism. Mind and Language 23 (1):1–24.
Richard R. Nelson (2007). Universal Darwinism and Evolutionary Social Science. Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):73-94.
Anya Plutynski (2010). Review of Godfrey-Smith's Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. [REVIEW] Philosophical Books 51 (2):83-101.
Wybo Houkes (2012). Population Thinking and Natural Selection in Dual-Inheritance Theory. Biology and Philosophy 27 (3):401-417.
Sylvie Geisendorf (2009). The Economic Concept of Evolution: Self-Organization or Universal Darwinism? Journal of Economic Methodology 16 (4):377-391.
Ignaas Devisch (2011). The Progress of Society: An Inquiry Into an 'Old-Fashioned' Thesis of Walter Bagehot. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (3):519 - 541.
J. W. Stoelhorst (2008). The Explanatory Logic and Ontological Commitments of Generalized Darwinism. Journal of Economic Methodology 15 (4):343-363.
Joeri Witteveen (2009). Darwinism About Darwinism. [REVIEW] Biological Theory 4 (2):207-213.
James Lennox, Darwinism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-05-13Total downloads6 ( #145,407 of 548,972 )Recent downloads (6 months)3 ( #25,799 of 548,972 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
