Pruning the tree of life
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (1):59-80 (1995)
| Abstract | argue that natural selection does not explain the genotypic arid phenotypic properties of individuals. On this view, natural selection explains the adaptedness of individuals, not by explaining why the individuals that exist have the adaptations they do, but rather by explaining why the individuals that exist are the ones with those adaptations. This paper argues that this ‘Negative’ view of natural selection ignores the fact that natural selection is a cumulative selection process. So understood, it explains how the genetic sequences that individuals inherit and that are responsible for their complex (and co-adapted) adaptations first arose in the gene-pool | |||||||||
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