How to understand casual relations in natural selection: Reply to Rosenberg and Bouchard [Book Review]
Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):355-364 (2005)
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In “Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection” (Matthen and Ariew [2002]; henceforth “Two Ways”), we asked how one should think of the relationship between the various factors invoked to explain evolutionary change – selection, drift, genetic constraints, and so on. We suggested that these factors are not related to one another as “forces” are in classical mechanics. We think it incoherent, for instance, to think of natural selection and drift as separate and opposed “forces” in evolutionary change – that it makes sense to say, for instance, that selection contributed 80% to the actual evolutionary history of the human eye, and drift only 20%. We proposed instead a statistical view of the Theory of Evolution, a view in which fitness is not a cause of evolution, but rather a measure of growth. We also argued for a “hierarchical realization model” for thinking about the relationship between evolutionary factors such as those mentioned above, and suggested that in a “fully specified model”, as we call it below, there is no distinction between natural selection and evolution.
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Keywords | Philosophy Philosophy of Biology Evolutionary Biology |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10539-005-5589-1 |
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References found in this work BETA
Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection.Mohan Matthen & André Ariew - 2002 - Journal of Philosophy 99 (2):55-83.
A General Account of Selection: Biology, Immunology, and Behavior.David L. Hull, Rodney E. Langman & Sigrid S. Glenn - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3):511-528.
Matthen and Ariew’s Obituary for Fitness: Reports of its Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated. [REVIEW]Alexander Rosenberg & Frederic Bouchard - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):343-353.
The Reduction(?) Of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics.Lawrence Sklar - 1999 - Philosophical Studies 95 (1-2):187 - 202.
At Last: Serious Consideration.David L. Hull, Rodney E. Langman & Sigrid S. Glenn - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3):559-569.
View all 7 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
The Pomp of Superfluous Causes: The Interpretation of Evolutionary Theory.Denis M. Walsh - 2007 - Philosophy of Science 74 (3):281-303.
Four Pillars of Statisticalism.Denis M. Walsh, André Ariew & Mohan Matthen - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (1):1-18.
A Critical Review of the Statisticalist Debate.Jun Otsuka - 2016 - Biology and Philosophy 31 (4):459-482.
View all 14 citations / Add more citations
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Two Ways of Thinking About Fitness and Natural Selection.Mohan Matthen & André Ariew - 2002 - Journal of Philosophy 99 (2):55-83.
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