Abstract
The contingency of biological regularities—and its implications for the existence of biological laws—has long puzzled biologists and philosophers. The best argument for the contingency of biological regularities is John Beatty’s evolutionary contingency thesis, which will be re-analyzed here. First, I argue that in Beatty’s thesis there are two versions of strong contingency used as arguments against biological laws that have gone unnoticed by his commentators. Second, Beatty’s two different versions of strong contingency are analyzed in terms of two different stabilities of regularities. Third, I argue that Beatty and his commentators have focused on the more ineffective trajectory stability version of the argument, whereas the constancy stability version provides a more substantial and applicable argument against the existence of biological laws. Fourth, I develop a counterexample to Beatty’s thesis. Finally, I discuss the possibility of evolution producing repeatable and general non-lawlike regularities and patterns by utilizing the notion of generative entrenchment and by criticizing the thesis of multiple realizability of biological properties.
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Notes
Bergmann’s rule is presented by Beatty (1995, 58–59) as an example of an evolutionary contingent regularity. If the lack of trajectory stability of the rule can be challenged, this casts doubt both on Beatty’s reasoning and on his examples of evolutionary contingent regularities.
For the sake of argument, I presume that multiple realizability holds in the case of heredity information. Note that the argument presented here for the stability of generatively entrenched traits is independent of the truth of the multiple realizability thesis in the sense that, even if the thesis is presumed to be true, generatively entrenched traits are still capable of displaying trajectory stability. At the same time, if the multiple realizability thesis can be questioned, then generatively entrenched traits become even more stable in the sense of displaying high degrees of trajectory stability, because the functional necessities or generatively entrenched traits become realization “necessities” as well.
Beatty developed his evolutionary contingency thesis as an elaboration of Gould’s ideas of the contingency of macroevolution (for an excellent review of Gould’s ideas, see Powell 2012). Beatty (2006) develops Gould’s evolutionary contingency further, distinguishing between the unpredictability notion and the causal dependency notion of evolutionary contingency. According to the unpredictability notion, evolutionary contingency means that unpredictable outcomes arise from the same or indistinguishable prior states. According to the causal dependency notion, evolutionary contingency means that a particular evolutionary outcome depends on which particular states preceded it. Both notions capture some elements of my trajectory stability version of strong contingency, yet neither is identical to it. I will not discuss Beatty’s two notions here; Powell (2009, 2012) and Turner (2010) already provide criticisms of them as meaningful interpretations of evolutionary contingency in the context of macroevolution. It suffices to point out that Powell’s (2009, 2012) idea of radical contingency, a notion that is meant both to unify the two Beattyan contingency concepts above and to give them a fair Gouldian reading, comes very close to my meaning of trajectory stability.
The strict law like nature of CEP and its “same-level” explanations to exceptions are discussed by the author in detail in two other articles (under review).
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Acknowledgments
The work was supported financially by the Academy of Finland as a part of the project “Causal and Mechanistic Explanations in the Environmental Sciences” (Project No. 1258020). I am grateful to the anonymous referees and to the editor of this journal, Helmut Pulte, who provided helpful comments and suggestions. N. Emrah Aydinonat, Markus Eronen, Till Grüne-Yanoff, Andrew Hamilton, Tomi Kokkonen, Jaakko Kuorikoski, Aki Lehtinen, Caterina Marchionni, Uskali Mäki, Anna-Mari Rusanen, Petri Ylikoski, Tero Ijäs, Petri Turunen, Rami Koskinen, Miles MacLeod, and Ilkka Pättiniemi all provided helpful comments, discussions, and suggestions on previous drafts of this paper.
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Raerinne, J. Evolutionary Contingency, Stability, and Biological Laws. J Gen Philos Sci 46, 45–62 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9271-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-014-9271-7