Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T01:58:21.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Really Statistical Explanations and Genetic Drift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marc Lange
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Really statistical (RS) explanation is a hitherto neglected form of noncausal scientific explanation. Explanations in population biology that appeal to drift are RS explanations. An RS explanation supplies a kind of understanding that a causal explanation of the same result cannot supply. Roughly speaking, an RS explanation shows the result to be mere statistical fallout.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 169 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Thanks to Chris Haufe, Alex Rosenberg, and participants at Philosophy of Biology at Madison (2012), Andrea Woody’s seminar on scientific explanation at the University of Washington (2011), and the British Society for the Philosophy of Science Special Seminar on Choice and Explanation (Oxford, 2012).

References

Abrams, Marshall. 2009. “How Do Natural Selection and Random Drift Interact?” Philosophy of Science 74:666–79.Google Scholar
Beatty, John. 1984. “Drift and Natural Selection.” Philosophy of Science 51:183–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, John 1992. “Random Drift.” In Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Keller, Evelyn Fox and Lloyd, Elisabeth, 273–81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bland, J. M., and Altman, D. G. 1994. “Statistic Notes: Regression.” British Medical Journal 308:1499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, Robert. 2005. “The Difference between Drift and Selection: A Reply to Millstein.” Biology and Philosophy 20:153–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, Robert 2006. “The Principle of Drift: Biology’s First Law.” Journal of Philosophy 103:319–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colyvan, Mark. 1998. “Can the Eleatic Principle Be Justified?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28:313–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feller, William. 1957. An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Galton, Francis. 1886. “Regression towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature.” Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 15:246–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gravetter, Frederick, and Wallnau, Larry. 2009. Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl G. 2001. “Science Unlimited?” In The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel, ed. Fetzer, James, 329–44. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hodge, M. J. S. 1987. “Natural Selection as a Causal, Empirical, and Probabilistic Theory.” In The Probabilistic Revolution, Vol. 2, ed. Lorenz Krüger, Lorraine Daston, and Michael Heidelberger, 233–70. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, R. I. G. 1989. The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, Frank, and Pettit, Philip. 1992. “In Defense of Explanatory Ecumenism.” Economics and Philosophy 8:1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kimura, Mootoo. 1991. “The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution: A Review of Recent Evidence.” Japanese Journal of Genetics 66:367–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lange, Marc. 2009a. “Dimensional Explanations.” Noûs 43:742–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Marc 2009b. “A Tale of Two Vectors.” Dialectica 63:397–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lange, Marc Forthcoming. “What Makes a Scientific Explanation Distinctively Mathematical?” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Lange, Marc, and Rosenberg, Alex. 2011. “Can There Be A Priori Causal Models of Natural Selection.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89:591–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1986. “Causal Explanation.” In Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, 214–40. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lipton, Peter. 2009. “Causation and Explanation.” In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Causation, ed. Beebee, Helen, Hitchcock, Christopher, and Menzies, Peter, 619–31. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Matthen, Mohan. 2009. “Drift and ‘Statistically Abstractive Explanation.’” Philosophy of Science 76:464–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLaughlin, Brian. 2007. “On Selection Of, For, With, and Against.” In Thinking about Causes, ed. Machamer, Peter and Wolters, Gereon, 265–83. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Millstein, Roberta. 2002. “Are Random Drift and Natural Selection Conceptually Distinct?” Biology and Philosophy 17:33–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millstein, Roberta 2006. “Natural Selection as a Population-Level Causal Process.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57:627–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plutynski, Anya. 2007. “Drift: A Historical and Conceptual Overview.” Biological Theory 2:156–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prior, Elizabeth, Pargetter, Robert, and Jackson, Frank. 1982. “Three Theses about Dispositions.” American Philosophical Quarterly 19:251–57.Google Scholar
Reisman, Kenneth, and Forber, Patrick. 2005. “Manipulation and the Causes of Evolution.” Philosophy of Science 72:1113–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rutherford, Ernest, and Geiger, Hans. 1910. “The Probability Variations in the Distribution of α Particles.” Philosophical Magazine 6 (20): 698–707.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley. 1989. “Four Decades of Scientific Explanation.” In Scientific Explanation, ed. Kitcher, Philip and Salmon, Wesley, 3–219. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Larry, and Sober, Elliott. 2007. “Epiphenomenalism: The Dos and the Don’ts.” In Thinking about Causes, ed. Machamer, Peter and Wolters, Gereon, 235–64. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Sober, Elliott. 1984. The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott 2001. “Two Faces of Fitness.” In Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives, Vol. 2, ed. Rama S. Singh, Costas B. Krimbas, Diane B. Paul, and John Beatty, 309–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sober, Elliott 2011. “A Priori Causal Models of Natural Selection.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89:571–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Denis M. 2007. “The Pomp of Superfluous Causes: The Interpretation of Evolutionary Theory.” Philosophy of Science 74:281–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Denis M., Lewens, Tim, and Ariew, André. 2002. “The Trials of Life: Natural Selection and Random Drift.” Philosophy of Science 69:452–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar