Evolutionary biology and feminism share a variety of philosophical and practical concerns. I have tried to describe how a perspective from both evolutionary biology and feminism can accelerate the achievement of goals for both feminists and evolutionary biologists. In an early section of this paper I discuss the importance of variation to the disciplines of evolutionary biology and feminism. In the section entitled “Control of Female Reproduction” I demonstrate how insight provided by participation (...) in life as woman and also as a feminist suggests testable hypotheses about the evolution of social behavior—hypotheses that are applicable to our investigations of the evolution of social behavior in nonhuman animals. In the section on “Deceit, Self-deception, and Patriarchal Reversals” I have overtly conceded that evolutionary biology, a scientific discipline, also represents a human cultural practice that, like other human cultural practices, may in parts and at times be characterized by deceit and self-deception. In the section on “Femininity” I have indicated how questions cast and answered and hypotheses tested from an evolutionary perspective can serve women and men struggling with sexist oppression. (shrink)

The present study asks the question whether Karl Rahner’s treatment of biological evolution holds merit for the dialogue between Catholic theology on the one hand and evolutionary biology on the other. Central to this evaluation will be an emphasis on two core tenets of modern evolutionary biology, namely emergence and the continuity of the evolutionary process. While the former bears relevance for our understanding of how life and anthropologically important phenomena such as “mind” and “consciousness” (...) came to be, the latter plays a crucial role in how we view our existence within the earth’s fluid and changing biosphere. It comes to the conclusion that Rahner’s concept of active self-transcendence recovers the notion of biological evolution as an on-going process where indeed something new emerges, and therefore offers an extremely helpful tool in the interdisciplinary conversation. However, this essay challenges Rahner’s understanding of the directedness of the evolutionary process toward the human being as well as his view that in us nature comes to self-consciousness for the first time and suggests alternatives. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the phenomenon of fraud and dishonesty in science is more akin to a perversion than a straight sin. Examples from the history of evolutionary biology are used to show how scientists employ supposed examples of fraud to discredit their opponents. Examples are drawn from the history of evolutionary biology involving Darwin, the Piltdown hoax, Edward O. Wilson, and Stephen Jay Gould.

How does evolutionary biology fit with Thomas Kuhn's famous distinction between puzzle solving and paradigm shifts in science?

The natural evolution of ethics is commonly understood in terms of the development from the selfish struggle to survive, via prudent cooperation, to altruism. However, cooperation that is prudent in the sense of serving basically selfish interests is not really altruistic. Besides, Christian ethics should not identify morality with absolutely disinterested altruism. Self-interest is only selfish when it is disproportionate or unfair; otherwise it is morally legitimate. Therefore the natural evolution of ethics is better understood as the gradual diversification of (...) the goods in which human beings have an interest. And evidently, whatever their origins, humans do have an interest in a range of goods, not just the preservation of their genes or their kin or themselves. Therefore the reductionist, Hobbesian assumptions about human motivation that game theory makes are empirically untrue of human behaviour in general, and so the range of cases to which it applies is accordingly narrow. Rather than using biology to interpret human motivation reductionistically, we should use zoology and anthropology to track the evolution of interest in diverse goods. The fact that eudaimonistic Christian ethics, as represented by Thomas Aquinas and Joseph Butler, has long recognised this diversity of human goods is one sign of its continuing explanatory power, and counts towards its truth. (shrink)

Evolutionary epistemologists aim to explain the evolution of cognitive capacities underlying human knowledge and also the processes that generate knowledge, for example in science. There can be no doubt that our cognitive capacities are due in part to our evolutionary heritage. But this is an uninformative thesis. All features of organism have indeed been shaped by evolution. A substantive evolutionary explanation of cognition would have to provide details about the evolutionary processes involved. Evolutionary epistemology has (...) not provided any details. Considering progress of theorizing in science, evolutionary epistemologists have proposed many different analogies between natural selection and selection in science. As yet, the analogies have not been fruitful. The entire program of evolutionary epistemology is programmatic. Evolutionary epistemologists have also moved beyond explanation to justification, the primary issue in traditional epistemology. It turns out that their program presupposes that we can justify knowledge claims in traditional ways. Evolutionary biology is not a proper tool for the justification of beliefs. (shrink)

Evolutionary ethics has recently become popular again. Some of its representatives elaborate new attempts to derive ethics from evolutionary biology. The attempts, like previous ones, fail because they commit the naturalistic fallacy. Premises from evolutionary biology together with normative premises also do not justify ethical principles. Other representatives argue that evolutionary considerations imply that ethics cannot be justified at all. Their arguments presuppose an unacceptable form of foundationalism. In principle, evolutionary biology might (...) explain some aspects of morality, but in practice explanations are hard to come by. All this does not imply that evolutionary theory is irrelevant in normative settings. To the contrary, it may help us devise guidelines in environmental policy and health care policy. It is to be hoped that evolutionary ethicists will divert their research efforts to the elaboration of such guidelines. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of (...) Unlimited Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

In recent years, an increasing number of medical books and papers attempting to analyse the concepts of health and disease from the perspective of evolutionary biology have been published.This paper introduces the evolutionary approach to health and disease in an attempt to illuminate the premisses and the framework of Darwinian medicine. My primary aim is to analyse to what extent evolutionary theory provides for a biological definition of the concept of disease. This analysis reveals some important (...) differences between functional explanations in the field of evolutionary biology and functional explanations in the field of medicine. Moreover, I shall argue that the biological functions relevant to the health of an organism cannot be determined on the basis of evolutionary theory. Accordingly, it seems that Darwinian medicine does not provide for the definition of a biological concept of disease. Still,Darwinian medicine may suggest why we are susceptible to certain diseases; it might also prove a suggestive heuristic on the basis of which new hypotheses concerning relevant treatments of various diseases might be advanced. (shrink)

In The Resurgence of Evolutionary Biology Terry Hoy charts the intersection between political theory and the intellectual debate over human evolution. The book deals with the contemporary interpretation of Darwinism as an apology for racism, imperialism, and capitalism. Hoy argues that this perspective underlies the contemporary debates between proponents of both genetic and environmental determinants of behavior. In response to several leading thinkers in the field—principally Edward Wilson, Stephen Gould and R. C. Lewontin—Hoy presents the neo-Darwinian synthesis of (...) Edwin Mayr as a mediation between these two schools of thought. This concise work is essential reading for scholars of political theory and philosophy, and anyone interested in seeking to understand the rise and fall—and rise again—of Darwinism and the contemporary political relevance of Aristotelian-Darwinian naturalism. (shrink)

John Reiss is a practicing evolutionary biologist (herpetology) who by his own account happened to be in the right place (Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology) at the right time (the 1980s) to hear echoes of the debate about sociobiology that had been raging there between E. O. Wilson and, on the other side, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin (xiv). Reiss is not concerned with sociobiology, at least in this book, but with the adaptationism that Gould and Lewontin saw (...) in the sociobiologists’ approach to cooperative behavior. At Harvard, Reiss was guided by Pere Alberch, in whose laboratory Gould’s stress on developmental constraints was being transformed into a now influential version of the Evo-devo movement (xiv, 327). On Alberch’s view, which Reiss accepts, variation in the rate, timing, placement, and intensity of gene products during the ontogenetic process, rather than mutation in structural genes, constitutes the proximate source of the phenotypic variation on which natural election works (327-29). Reiss does not think that Evo-devo, at least as he construes it, does away with natural selection. Rather, he seeks to identify the role played by selection in retaining or eliminating the variation generated in the developmental process. Selection, he argues, enables organisms, populations, species, and other lineages to maintain the presumptively adapted conditions of existence to which their very persistence already testifies. “Adaptedness,” Reiss writes, “is not a product of evolution; it is a condition for evolution” (22). He thinks that this fact, as he takes it to be, belies the adaptationist assumption that organisms are collections of independently optimal adaptations that arise by way of concerted spurts of directional selection. “It is a mistake,” he writes, “to atomize organisms and to explain each part as the solution of a problem raised by the environment” (295). (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have come to realize that the relationship between science and values raises questions which are both important and not readily answered. It is true that the major figures in that tradition known as ‘logical empiricism’ appreciated that science always exceeds its empirical grasp and that it is necessary for scientists to be guided and constrained by so-called ‘epistemic values,’ these being values (in the words of one supporter) ‘presumed to promote the truth-like character of science, its (...) character as the most secure knowledge available to us of the world we seek to understand.’ However, these values — such things as internal and external consistency, simplicity, predictive accuracy and fertility, unificatory power (consilience) — were considered special. Inasmuch as they could not be reduced to basic principles of logic — and there were attempts to do this — they were still thought of, in some sense, as beyond the vagaries of human emotion. Their importance was not a function of the individual’s personal inclinations, nor of those of the group, whether this group be understood as a closely knit band of researchers or even up to a complete society. (shrink)

The increasing place of evolutionary scenarios in functional biology is one of the major indicators of the present encounter between evolutionary biology and functional biology (such as physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology), the two branches of biology which remained separated throughout the twentieth century. Evolutionary scenarios were not absent from functional biology, but their places were limited, and they did not generate research programs. I compare two examples of these past scenarios (...) with two present-day ones. At least three characteristics distinguish present and past efforts: An excellent description of the systems under study, a rigorous use of the evolutionary models, and the possibility to experimentally test the evolutionary scenarios. These three criteria allow us to distinguish the domains in which the encounter is likely to be fruitful, and those where the obstacles to be overcome are high and in which the proposed scenarios have to be considered with considerable circumspection. (shrink)

Traces scholarly thought from the nineteenth-century birth of evolutionary biology to the mapping of the human genome through forty-eight essays, arranged in chronological order, each preceded by a one-page essay that explains the significance of the chosen work.

This chapter contains sections titled: Theism and Evolutionary Theory Evolution and Divine Purpose Evolution and the “Objectivity of Nature” Evolution as Cruel and Wasteful Evolution as Random and Contingent Evolution and Human Nature Evolution, Physicalism, and Purpose Works cited.

Evolutionary biology – or, more precisely, two (purported) applications of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, namely, evolutionary psychology and what has been called human behavioral biology – is on the cusp of becoming the new rage among legal scholars looking for interdisciplinary insights into the law. We argue that as the actual science stands today, evolutionary biology offers nothing to help with questions about legal regulation of behavior. Only systematic misrepresentations or lack (...) of understanding of the relevant biology, together with far-reaching analytical and philosophical confusions, have led anyone to think otherwise. Evolutionary accounts are etiological accounts of how a trait evolved. We argue that an account of causal etiology could be relevant to law if (1) the account of causal etiology is scientifically well-confirmed, and (2) there is an explanation of how the well-confirmed etiology bears on questions of development (what we call the Environmental Gap Objection). We then show that the accounts of causal etiology that might be relevant are not remotely well-confirmed by scientific standards. We argue, in particular, that (a) evolutionary psychology is not entitled to assume selectionist accounts of human behaviors, (b) the assumptions necessary for the selectionist accounts to be true are not warranted by standard criteria for theory choice, and (c) only confusions about levels of explanation of human behavior create the appearance that understanding the biology of behavior is important. We also note that no response to the Environmental Gap Objection has been proffered. In the concluding section of the article, we turn directly to the work of Owen Jones, a leading proponent of the relevance of evolutionary biology to law, and show that he does not come to terms with any of the fundamental problems identified in this article. (shrink)

Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, (...) also sheds new light on several episodes in that history, and particularly on the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), the construction of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the chronic discontent with it, and the latest expression of that discontent, called the extended evolutionary synthesis. Lastly, we also explain why this kind of analysis hasn’t been done before. (shrink)

On a common view of evolution, natural selection is the major force that produces evolutionary change. Selection is thought to operate on different types (genotypes or phenotypes) in populations so as to generate differential reproductive survival of these types. This should engender changes in population composition. The conception of selection as a "force" should be considered as a convenient shorthand that easily misleads us. Selection is not a factor over and above items such as temperature regimes, predators, and so (...) forth. These items do causal work in evolutionary processes. The term "selection" is merely an abstract placeholder for them. Differential reproductive survival thus appears to depend on particular environmental items that influence different types in different ways. Such items are properly regarded as the selective agents. On the face of it, selection processes must always be due to the operation of such agents. I argue that this is a mistaken assumption. Processes of selection may well occur in the absence of selective agents. That is because environmental factors may contribute to differential reproductive survival even if they do not affect different genotypes or phenotypes in different ways. Considering the role of the environment in selection, we should distinguish between selective agents and contributive agents. (shrink)

"Provine's thorough and thoroughly admirable examination of Wright's life and influence, which is accompanied by a very useful collection of Wright's papers on evolution, is the best we have for any recent figure in evolutionary biology."—Joe Felsenstein, Nature "In Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology... Provine has produced an intellectual biography which serves to chart in considerable detail both the life and work of one man and the history of evolutionary theory in the middle half of (...) this century. Provine is admirably suited to his task.... The resulting book is clearly a labour of love which will be of great interest to those who have a mature interest in the history of evolutionary theory."-John Durant, ;ITimes Higher Education Supplement;X. (shrink)

Human propensities that are the products of Darwinian evolution may combine to generate a form of social behavior that is not itself a direct result of such pressure. This possibility may provide a satisfying explanation for the origin of socially transmitted rules such as the incest taboo. Similarly, the regulatory processes of development that generated adaptations to the environment in the circumstances in which they evolved can produce surprising and sometimes maladaptive consequences for the individual in modern conditions. These combinatorial (...) aspects of social and developmental dynamics leave a subtle but not wholly uninteresting role for evolutionary biology in explaining the origins of human morality. (shrink)

It is usually maintained by biologists and philosophers alike that essentialism is incompatible with evolutionary biology, and that abandoning essentialism was a precondition of progress being made in the biological sciences. These claims pose a problem for anyone familiar with both evolutionary biology and current metaphysics. Very few current scientific theories enjoy the prestige of evolutionary biology. But essentialism – long in the bad books amongst both biologists and philosophers – has been enjoying a (...) strong resurgence of late amongst analytical philosophers with a taste for metaphysics. Indeed, to impartial observers it is likely to appear that both evolutionary biology and essentialism are as well supported in their respective domains as could reasonably be expected. There is thus at least a prima facie tension here between evolutionary biology, metaphysics and, as we shall see, pre-theoretical common sense. (shrink)

Abstract. This paper examines the impact of two formalizations of evolutionary biology on the antiselectionist critiques of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. It looks first at attempts to apply the syntactic framework of the physical sciences to biology in the twentieth century, and to their effect upon the ID movement. It then examines the more heuristic account of biological-theory structure, namely, the semantic model. Finally, it concludes by advocating the semantic conception and emphasizing the problems that the (...) semantic model creates for ID's negative and positive theses. (shrink)

Biology cannot accommodate all aspects of culture. Aspects of culture that a biological approach can take into account can be covered by the biological categories of phenotype and environment. There is no need to treat culture as a separate category. Attempts to elaborate biological explanations of cultural variation will meet with success only if biologists expand theories of development, and integrate them in evolutionary biology. The alternative — elaborating the idea of so-called cultural inheritance — makes little (...) sense from a biological point of view. (shrink)

A common worry about the genetic engineering of human beings is that it will reduce human genetic diversity, creating a biological monoculture that could not only increase our susceptibility to disease but also hasten the extinction of our species. Thus far, however, the evolutionary implications of human genetic modification remain largely unexplored. In this paper, I consider whether the widespread use of genetic engineering technology is likely to narrow the present range of genetic variation, and if so, whether this (...) would in fact lead to the evolutionary harms that some authors envision. By examining the nature of biological variation and its relation to population immunity and evolvability, I show that not only will genetic engineering have a negligible impact on human genetic diversity, but also that it will be more likely to ensure rather than undermine the health and longevity of the human species. (shrink)

Throughout my university career, and since I began my Ph.D., Jean Gayon was there. Unlike many contributors to this volume, to the early or mid-career researchers who do French philosophy of biology today, I did not know Jean as a dissertation supervisor or a professor, but as a dissertation examiner, as expert witness to the beginning of my career and as indisputable scientific authority. For fifteen years I have been doing philosophy of evolutionary biology with Jean Gayon. (...) In this chapter, I do not offer an analysis of “evolutionary biology according to Gayon” but I aim to pay tribute to a philosopher who was at once a “major contemporary”, a colleague, a friend, and an inspiration. (shrink)

A fundamental philosophical question that arises in connection with evolutionary theory is whether the fittest patterns of behavior are always the most rational. Are fitness and rationality fully compatible? When behavioral rationality is characterized formally as in classical decision theory, the question becomes mathematically meaningful and can be explored systematically by investigating whether the optimally fit behavior predicted by evolutionary process models is decision-theoretically coherent. Upon investigation, it appears that in nontrivial evolutionary models the expected behavior is (...) not always in accord with the norms of the standard theory of decision as ordinarily applied. Many classically irrational acts, e.g. betting on the occurrence of one event in the knowledge that the probabilities favor another, can under certain circumstances constitute adaptive behavior.One interesting interpretation of this clash is that the criterion of rationality offered by classical decision theory is simply incorrect (or at least incomplete) as it stands, and that evolutionary theory should be called upon to provide a more generally applicable theory of rationality. Such a program, should it prove feasible, would amount to the logical reduction of the theory of rational choice to evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Evolutionary theory is undergoing an intense period of discussion and reevaluation. This, contrary to the misleading claims of creationists and other pseudoscientists, is no harbinger of a crisis but rather the opposite: the field is expanding dramatically in terms of both empirical discoveries and new ideas. In this essay I briefly trace the conceptual history of evolutionary theory from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism, and from the Modern Synthesis to what I refer to as the Extended Synthesis, a more inclusive (...) conceptual framework containing among others evo–devo, an expanded theory of heredity, elements of complexity theory, ideas about evolvability, and a reevaluation of levels of selection. I argue that evolutionary biology has never seen a paradigm shift, in the philosophical sense of the term, except when it moved from natural theology to empirical science in the middle of the 19th century. The Extended Synthesis, accordingly, is an expansion of the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, and one that—like its predecessor—will probably take decades to complete. (shrink)

Evolution - both the fact that it occurred and the theory describing the mechanisms by which it occurred - is an intrinsic and central component in modern biology. Theodosius Dobzhansky captures this well in the much-quoted title of his 1973 paper 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'. The correctness of this assertion is even more obvious today: philosophers of biology and biologists agree that the fact of evolution is undeniable and that the (...) theory of evolution explains that fact. Such a theory has far-reaching implications. In this volume, eleven distinguished scholars address the conceptual, metaphysical and epistemological richness of the theory and its ethical and religious impact, exploring topics including DNA barcoding, three grand challenges of human evolution, functionalism, historicity, design, evolution and development, and religion and secular humanism. The volume will be of great interest to those studying philosophy of biology and evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist (...) Alfred Kroeber, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)

This book is the first systematic treatment of the philosophy of science underlying evolutionary economics. It does not advocate an evolutionary approach towards economics, but rather assesses the epistemic value of appealing to evolutionary biology in economics more generally. The author divides work in evolutionary economics into three distinct, albeit related, forms: a structural form, an evidential form, and a heuristic form. He then analyzes five examples of work in evolutionary economics falling under these (...) three forms. For the structural form, he examines the parallelism between natural selection and economic decision making, and the parallelism between natural selection and market competition. For the evidential form, he looks at the relationship between animal and human economic decision making, and the evolutionary explanation of diversity in human economic decision making. Finally, for the heuristic form, he focuses on the plausibility of equilibrium modeling in evolutionary ecology and economics. In this way, he shows that linking evolutionary biology and economics can make for a powerful methodological tool that can enable progress in our understanding of various economics questions. Structure, Evidence, and Heuristic will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, evolutionary biology, and economics. (shrink)

The idea of integrating evolutionary biology and psychology has great promise, but one that will be compromised if psychological functions are conceived too abstractly and neuroscience is not allowed to play a contructive role. We argue that the proper integration of neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology requires a telelogical as opposed to a merely componential analysis of function. A teleological analysis is required in neuroscience itself; we point to traditional and curent research methods in neuroscience, which (...) make critical use of distinctly teleological functional considerations in brain cartography. Only by invoking teleological criteria can researchers distinguish the fruitful ways of identifying brain components from the myriad of possible ways. One likely reason for reluctance to turn to neuroscience is fear of reduction, but we argue that, in the context of a teleological perspective on function, this concern is misplaced. Adducing such theoretical considerations as top-down and bottom-up constraints on neuroscientific and psychological models, as well as existing cases of productive, multidisciplinary cooperation, we argue that integration of neuroscience into psychology and evolutionary biology is likely to be mutually beneficial. We also show how it can be accommodated methodologically within the framework of an interfield theory. (shrink)

In this study the relationship between functional morpholoy and evolutionary biology is analysed by confronting the main concepts in both disciplines.Rather than only discussing this connection theoretically, the analysis is carried out by introducing important practical and experimental studies, which use aspects from both disciplines. The mentioned investigations are methodologically analysed and the consequences for extensions of the relationship are worked out. It can be shown that both disciplines have a large domain of their own and also share (...) a large common ground. Many disagreements among evolutionary biologists can be reduced to differences in general philosophy (idealism vs. realism), selection of phenomenona (structure vs. function), definition of concepts (natural selection) and the position of the concept theory as an explaining factor (neutralists vs. selectionists, random variation, determinate selection, etc.). (shrink)

Research in ecology and evolutionary biology (evo-eco) often tries to emulate the “hard” sciences such as physics and chemistry, but to many of its practitioners feels more like the “soft” sciences of psychology and sociology. I argue that this schizophrenic attitude is the result of lack of appreciation of the full consequences of the peculiarity of the evo-eco sciences as lying in between a-historical disciplines such as physics and completely historical ones as like paleontology. Furthermore, evo-eco researchers have (...) gotten stuck on mathematically appealing but philosophi- cally simplistic concepts such as null hypotheses and p-values defined according to the frequentist approach in statistics, with the consequence of having been unable to fully embrace the complexity and subtlety of the problems with which ecologists and evolutionary biologists deal with. I review and discuss some literature in ecology, philosophy of science and psychology to show that a more critical methodological attitude can be liberating for the evo-eco scientist and can lead to a more fecund and enjoyable practice of ecology and evolutionary biology. With this aim, I briefly cover concepts such as the method of multiple hypotheses, Bayesian analysis, and strong inference. (shrink)

Th. Dobzhansky played a special role in the reception and development of the “synthetic theory of evolution,” as well as in the establishment of scientific connections between Soviet and U.S. evolutionists, and first and foremost, geneticists. These connections greatly influenced the development of Soviet genetics, of evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology as a whole, and in particular the restoration of Soviet genetics in the late 1960s. A discussion of Dobzhansky’s correspondence and collaboration with colleagues in his native (...) country, moreover, allows for an improved understanding of the complex and dramatic history of Soviet genetics and evolutionary theory. It also provides novel insights into the interactions between scientists and authorities in the Soviet Union (USSR). (shrink)

One of the major criticisms of optimal foraging theory is that it is not testable. In discussions of this criticism opposing parties have confused methodological concepts and used meaningless biological concepts. In this paper we discuss such misunderstandings and show that OFr has an empirically testable, and even well-confirmed, general core theory. One of our main conclusions is that specific model testing should not be aimed at ‘proving’ optimality, but rather at identifying the context in which certain types of behaviour (...) are optimal. To do this, it is necessary to be aware of the assumptions made in testing a model. The assumptions that are explicitly stated in the literature up to now do not completely cover the actual assumptions made in testing OFT models in practice. We present a more comprehensive set of assumptions. Although all the assumptions play a role in testing models, they are not of equal status. Crucial assumptions concern constraints and the relation between fitness and currency. Therefore, it is essential to make such assumptions testable in practice. We show that a more explicit relationship between OFT modelling and evolutionary theory can help with this. Specifically, phylogeny reconstruction and population dynamic modelling can and should be used to formulate assumptions concerning constraints and currencies. (shrink)

Evolutionary theorists often talk as if natural selection were choosing the most adapted traits, or if organisms were deciding to do the most adaptive strategy. Moreover, the payoff of those decisions often depend on what others are doing, and since Hamilton (1964), biologists possess conceptual tools such as kin selection and inclusive fitness to make sense of outcomes of evolution in these contexts, even when they seem unadaptive (such as sterility). The link between selection and adaptation through which selection (...) or organisms can be seen as agents, as well as the scope and nature of Hamiltonian conceptions of social evolution, stimulated many formal elaborations (such as, initially, Fisher’s “Fundamental theorem of natural selection”), but also raise major philosophical issues about causation and statistics, and about rationality and adaptation or selection. Two recent philosophy books, Okasha’s Agents and goals in evolution, and Birch’s Philosophy of social evolution, tackle those question. This essay reflects on them in order to think of those two issues. After having reviewed the books, I try to sketch some philosophical lessons onto which they concur. (shrink)

In this article our aim is to present some of the coordinates of the debate around common good. Starting by recognizing the importance of common good for the Christian worldview after the presence of it in St. Paul’s “the manifestation of Spirit is given for the common good”, we will present two ways of interpreting the development of our moral and emotional tendencies that have to do with two different evolutionary approaches. By the end of the article, we hope (...) to have established the argumental advantage of the cooperativist in front of the social Darwinist, opening the possibility for a possible interpretation of evolution as guided towards common good. (shrink)

This article investigates whether there is an underlying morality in the ways that human beings seek to obtain economic security within our imperfect economy, which can be illuminated through evolutionary biology research. Two research questions are the focus of the analysis: (1) What is the transaction cognitive machinery that is specialized for the entrepreneurial task of exchange-based security-seeking? and, (2) What are the moral implications of the acquisition and use of such transaction cognitions?Evolutionary biology research suggests (...) within concepts that are more Darwin- v. Huxley-based, an underlying morality supportive of algorithm-governed economizing arising from the behaviors that are most worthy of long-term reproduction. Evolutionarily stable algorithm-enhanced security-seeking is argued to be a new view of entrepreneurship, but one that, somewhat ironically, is grounded in a primordially-based entrepreneurial morality that is at the core of economic security. (shrink)

First, a brief history is provided of Popper's views on the status of evolutionary biology as a science. The views of some prominent biologists are then canvassed on the matter of falsifiability and its relation to evolutionary biology. Following that, I argue that Popper's programme of falsifiability does indeed exclude evolutionary biology from within the circumference of genuine science, that Popper's programme is fundamentally incoherent, and that the correction of this incoherence results in a (...) greatly expanded and much more realistic concept of what is empirical, resulting in the inclusion of evolutionary biology. Finally, this expanded concept of empirical is applied to two particular problems in evolutionary biology — viz., the species problem and the debate over the theory of punctuated equilibria — and it is argued that both of them are still mainly metaphysical. (shrink)

Considerations from evolutionary biology lead Michael Ruse, among others, to a naturalistic turn in philosophy. I assess some of the pragmatic and skeptical conclusions concerning ethics, religion, and epistemology that Ruse draws from his evolutionary naturalism. Finally, I argue that there is an essential tension between science and religion which forecloses the possibility of an ultimate reconciliation between the two as they are now understood.

Perhaps the most familiar understanding of “naturalism” derives from Quine, understanding it as a continuity of empirical theories of the world as described through the scientific method. So, it might be surprising that one of the most important naturalistic moral realists, Philippa Foot, rejects standard evolutionary biology in her justly lauded _Natural Goodness_. One of her main reasons for this is the true claim that humans can flourish (eudaimonia) without reproducing, which she claims cannot be squared with (...) class='Hi'>evolutionary theory and biology more generally. The present argument concludes that Foot was wrong to reject evolutionary theory as the empirical foundation of naturalized eudaimonist moral realism. This is based on contemporary discussion of _biological function_ and _evolutionary fitness_, from which a definition of “eudaimonia” is constructed. This gives eudaimonist moral realism an empirically respectable foundation. (shrink)