Abstract

The problem of the evolution of sexual reproduction represents a crisis within evolutionary biology. In light of his theory of evolution by natural selection, even Darwin could find no strong reason for the predominance of sex. He wrote that the "whole subject is as yet hidden in darkness." I employ the case study of the evolution of sex to fill a lacuna within current philosophy. The link between the philosophy of science, with its grand theories of explanation, and the philosophy of biology, with its growing insistence on the importance of pluralism, has not been addressed. I develop a positive argument for the existence of explanatory pluralism in the study of complex biological phenomena. ;Explanatory pluralism is the existence of more than one explanation for a complex phenomenon, such as meiosis. Pluralism exists because phenomena can be included in more than one homogeneous domain, or in a heterogeneous domain. I argue that domain partitioning is not always useful as a general strategy for decreasing pluralism because domains may be changeable, intricately connected and heterogeneous. The evolution of sex is a complicated heterogeneous domain that exemplifies all of these three characteristics. ;I argue that the theories of explanation, such as unification and causal mechanism, found in the philosophy of science cannot be employed in such as way as to eliminate explanatory pluralism. Furthermore, I find that much of this pluralism is not the result of pragmatic considerations. My final argument concerns the implications that explanatory pluralism may have for the objectivity of scientific practice. I employ several feminist conceptions of objectivity to demonstrate that pluralism does not threaten the objectivity of research and that it is by means of this pluralism that researchers develop a clear understanding of the phenomenon