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Wayward Modeling: Population Genetics and Natural Selection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bruce Glymour
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Abstract

Since the introduction of mathematical population genetics, its machinery has shaped our fundamental understanding of natural selection. Selection is taken to occur when differential fitnesses produce differential rates of reproductive success, where fitnesses are understood as parameters in a population genetics model. To understand selection is to understand what these parameter values measure and how differences in them lead to frequency changes. I argue that this traditional view is mistaken. The descriptions of natural selection rendered by population genetics models are in general neither predictive nor explanatory and introduce avoidable conceptual confusions. I conclude that a correct understanding of natural selection requires explicitly causal models of reproductive success.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 369 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I wish to thank Doug Patterson, Srini Kambhampati, Brett Sandercock, Scott Tanonoa, and two anonymous referees; their collective suggestions have greatly improved the paper.

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