Two ways of thinking about fitness and natural selection

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 99, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 55-83

  Matthen, Mohan ^a   Ariew, André ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0013143399     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3655552     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature(Cambridge: MIT, 1984).
2. The Nature of Selection, p. 34.
3. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton:University Press, 1984), pp. 36-37.
4. "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critiqueof the Adaptationist Programme, " Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, CCV (1978): 581-98;
5. reprinted in Sober, ed., Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Theory(Cambridge: MIT, 1984), pp. 256-70. Page references are to the latter version.
6. "Fitness, " this JOURNAL, LXXX, 8 (August 1983): 457-73, at p.459.
7. See David Hull, Rodney Langman, and Sigrid Glenn, "A General Accountof Selection: Biology, Immunology, and Behavior, " Behavioral and Brain Sciences, XXIV (2001): 511-28.
8. Donald E. Campbell, "Evolutionary Epistemology, " in PA.Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Volume 1 (LaSalle IL: Open Court, 1972), pp. 412-63.
9. In "Teleology and the Product Analog, " Australasian Journal of Philosophy, LXXV (1997): 21-37, Matthen argues that the diversity of processesin these substrates undermines the claim that there is a distinctive form ofcausation involved in the genesis of teleological functions, and proposes thatthey are based on an analogy.
10. "The Reduction (?) of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics, "Philosophical Studies, XCV (1999): 187-202.
11. "The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, " Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, LXIX (1994): 443-74,
12. See the beautiful exposition in G. R. Price, "Fisher's 'Fundamental Theorem' Made Clear, " Annals of Human Genetics, XXXVI (1972): 129-40.
13. Price himself has a general mathematical characterization of naturalselection in "Selection and Covariance, " Nature, CCXXVII (1970):520-21.
14. Steven A. Frank has a useful comparative discussion of general approachesto selection in "The Price Equation, Fisher's Fundamental Theorem, Kin Selection, and Causal Analysis, " Evolution, LI (1997): 1712-29.
15. Darwinian Dynamics: Evolutionary Transitions in Fitness and Individuality(Princeton: University Press, 1999).
16. See Price, "Fisher's 'Fundamental Theorem', " p. 130.
17. An accessible account of reversibility can be found in P. W. A. Atkins, The Second Law (New York: Freeman, 1984).
18. For a famous and vivid study of discontinuities and reversals inselection, see Peter Grant, Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches(Princeton: University Press, 1986).
19. In "Chasing Shadows: Natural Selection and Adaptation, " Studiesin the History and Philosophy of Biology and the Biomedical Sciences, XXXI(2000): 135-53, Denis Walsh argues, on grounds independent of those given here, that heat transfer and natural selection are "pseudo-processes."
20. Ariew discusses the explanatory value of statistical patterns in"Are Probabilities Necessary for Evolutionary Explanations?" Biologyand Philosophy, XIII (1998): 245-53.
21. Here we concur with Sober, "Physicalism from a Probabilistic Pointof View, " Philosophical Studies, XCV (1999): 135-74, especially pp. 145-48.
22. "The Reduction(?) of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics, "p. 194; see also footnote 25 above.
23. See P. E. Griffiths and R. D. Gray, "Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation, " this JOURNAL, XCI, 6 (June 1994): 277-304;
24. and Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution (New York: Cambridge, 1985).