Abstract
Jean Gayon can be defined a philosopher of biology with a historical approach to epistemic issues. Evidence for this statement may come from reconsidering his Darwinism’s Struggle for Survival (Gayon, Darwinism’s struggle for survival: Heredity and the hypothesis of natural selection, Cambridge University Press, 1998 [1992]), which he presented as “a scenario of rational reconstruction.” He was essentially interested in developmental perspectives on concepts, theories and analytic procedures, but the reconstructions he considered had to undergo the test of fitting with a historical analysis of the antagonistic theories that developed and succeeded that of Darwin. The rigorous and successful methodology Gayon applied in this major work and several others may account for the lasting value of his reconstitution of the transformation phases that the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution by natural selection underwent up to the advent of the evolutionary synthesis.
Translated from Duchesneau (2018).
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Duchesneau, F. (2023). Jean Gayon and the Historical Perspective in Philosophy of Biology. In: Méthot, PO. (eds) Philosophy, History and Biology: Essays in Honour of Jean Gayon. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28157-0_4
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