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  1. No Theory for Old Man. Evolution led to an Equal Contribution of Various Aging Mechanisms.Alexey Turchin - manuscript
    Does a single mechanism of aging exit? Most scientists have their own pet theories about what is aging, but the lack of generally accepted theory is mind-blowing. Here we suggest an explanation: evolution works against unitary mechanism of aging because it equalizes ‘warranty period’ of different resilience systems. Therefore, we need life-extension methods that go beyond fighting specific aging mechanisms: such as using a combination of geroprotectors or repair-fixing bionanorobots controlled by AI.
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  2. Darwinian and Autopoietic Views of the Organism.Walter Veit & Heather Browning - 2022 - Constructivist Foundations 18 (1):103–105.
    Our goal is to illustrate that Darwinian and autopoietic views of the organism are not as squarely opposed to each other as is often assumed. Indeed, we will argue that there is much common ground between them and that they can usefully supplement each other.
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  3. Reticulate evolution underlies synergistic trait formation in human communities.Nathalie Gontier & Anton Sukhoverkhov - forthcoming - Evolutionary Anthropology.
    This paper investigates how reticulate evolution contributes to a better understanding of human sociocultural evolution in general, and community formation in particular. Reticulate evolution is evolution as it occurs by means of symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity, and hybridization. From these mechanisms and processes, we mainly zoom in on symbiosis and we investigate how it underlies the rise of (1) human, plant, animal, and machine interactions typical of agriculture, animal husbandry, farming, and industrialization; (2) diet-microbiome relationships; and (3) (...)
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  4. Economic drivers of biological complexity.Steve Phelps & Yvan I. Russell - 2015 - Adaptive Behavior 23:315-326.
    The complexity that we observe in nature can often be explained in terms of cooperative behavior. For example, the major transitions of evolution required the emergence of cooperation among the lower-level units of selection, which led to specialization through division-of-labor ultimately resulting in spontaneous order. There are two aspects to address explaining how such cooperation is sustained: how free-riders are prevented from free-riding on the benefits of cooperative tasks, and just as importantly, how those social benefits arise. We review these (...)
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  5. Evolution: Debunking "The Blind Watchmaker" Theory with Aristotle.Jeffrey Camlin - manuscript
    Three errors of "The Blind Watchmaker" theory are examined with Aristotelian thought.
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  6. Philosophy in Science: Some Personal Reflections.Elliott Sober - 2022 - Philosophy of Science 89 (5):899-907.
    The task of Philosophy in Science (PinS) is to use philosophical tools to help solve scientific problems. This article describes how I stumbled into this line of work and then addressed several topics in philosophy of biology—units of selection, cladistic parsimony, robustness and trade-offs in model building, adaptationism, and evidence for common ancestry—often in collaboration with scientists. I conclude by offering advice for would-be PinS practitioners.
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  7. Universal Consciousness and Spiritual Emergentism in the Evolutionary Integral Vedanta of Sri Aurobindo.Marco Masi - manuscript
    The recent revival of metaphysical frameworks in Western consciousness studies, such as panpsychism, cosmopsychism and its idealistic and monistic versions, is viewed from the standpoint of an extended and more consistent spiritual emergentist evolutionary cosmology in the light of the Indian mystic, poet and philosopher Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950). This integral Vedantic cosmology will be outlined and thus furnish a more coherent metaphysical framework, inside which several of the issues and shortcomings that vitiated the previous ontologies can find their natural accommodation. (...)
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  8. The Archeology of Qualia.Cosmin Visan - 2021 - Journal Of Anthropological And Archeological Sciences 4 (5):565-569.
    Researching into our past, scientists use different methods, from looking at the night sky to digging traces of our past and analyzing DNA. I propose here another method, that can have the potential of shedding more light into our history and the type of entities that we are. Working under philosophical idealism, I propose that evolution is in the first place the evolution of consciousness, and thus the traces of evolution are mostly not to be found in our physical bodies, (...)
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  9. Ageing and the goal of evolution.Justin Garson - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (1):1-16.
    There is a certain metaphor that has enjoyed tremendous longevity in the evolution of ageing literature. According to this metaphor, nature has a certain goal or purpose, the perpetuation of the species, or, alternatively, the reproductive success of the individual. In relation to this goal, the individual organism has a function, job, or task, namely, to breed and, in some species, to raise its brood to maturity. On this picture, those who cannot, or can no longer, reproduce are somehow invisible (...)
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  10. Introduction to evolutionary epistemology, language and culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2006 - In Nathalie Gontier, Jean Paul van Bendegem & Diederik Aerts (eds.), Evolutionary Epistemology, Language and Culture: A Non-Adaptationist, Systems Theoretical Approach. Springer. pp. 1-29.
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  11. Universal symbiogenesis: a genuine alternative to universal selectionist accounts.Nathalie Gontier - 2007 - Symbiosis 1 (44):167-181.
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  12. Guest-Editorial Introduction: Converging Evolutionary Patterns in Life and Culture.Nathalie Gontier - 2016 - Evolutionary Biology 4 (43):427-445.
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  13. El holobionte/hologenoma como nivel de seleccion.Javier Suárez - 2021 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 36 (1):81-112.
    The units or levels of selection debate concerns the question of what kind of biological systems are stable enough that part of their evolution is a result of the process of natural selection acting at their level. Traditionally, the debate has concerned at least two different, though related, questions: the question of the level at which interaction with the environment occurs, and the question of the level at which reproduction occurs. In recent years, biologists and philosophers have discussed a new (...)
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  14. Testing the “(Neo-)Darwinian” Principles against Reticulate Evolution: How Variation, Adaptation, Heredity and Fitness, Constraints and Affordances, Speciation, and Extinction Surpass Organisms and Species.Nathalie Gontier - 2020 - Information 11 (7):352.
    Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction form the building blocks of the (Neo-)Darwinian research program, and several of these have been called “Darwinian principles.” Here, we suggest that caution should be taken in calling these principles Darwinian because of the important role played by reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes in also bringing about these phenomena. Reticulate mechanisms and processes include symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity mediated by genetic and organismal mobility, and hybridization. Because (...)
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  15. Cultural Inheritance in Generalized Darwinism.Christian J. Feldbacher-Escamilla & Karim Baraghith - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (2):237-261.
    Generalized Darwinism models cultural development as an evolutionary process, where traits evolve through variation, selection, and inheritance. Inheritance describes either a discrete unit’s transmission or a mixing of traits. In this article, we compare classical models of cultural evolution and generalized population dynamics with respect to blending inheritance. We identify problems of these models and introduce our model, which combines relevant features of both. Blending is implemented as success-based social learning, which can be shown to be an optimal strategy.
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  16. The stability of traits conception of the hologenome: An evolutionary account of holobiont individuality.Javier Suárez - 2020 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 42 (1):1-27.
    Bourrat and Griffiths :33, 2018) have recently argued that most of the evidence presented by holobiont defenders to support the thesis that holobionts are evolutionary individuals is not to the point and is not even adequate to discriminate multispecies evolutionary individuals from other multispecies assemblages that would not be considered evolutionary individuals by most holobiont defenders. They further argue that an adequate criterion to distinguish the two categories is fitness alignment, presenting the notion of fitness boundedness as a criterion that (...)
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  17. Rethinking Incest Avoidance: Beyond the Disciplinary Groove of Culture-First Views.Robert A. Wilson - 2021 - Biological Theory 16 (3):162-175.
    The Westermarck Effect posits that intimate association during childhood promotes human incest avoidance. In previous work, I articulated and defended a version of the Westermarck Effect by developing a phylogenetic argument that has purchase within primatology but that has had more limited appeal for cultural anthropologists due to their commitment to conventionalist or culture-first accounts of incest avoidance. Here I look to advance the discussion of incest and incest avoidance beyond culture-first accounts in two ways. First, I shall dig deeper (...)
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  18. William James’s Objection to Epiphenomenalism.Alexander Klein - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):1179–1190.
    James developed an evolutionary objection to epiphenomenalism that is still discussed today. Epiphenomenalists have offered responses that do not grasp its full depth. I thus offer a new reading and assessment of James’s objection. Our life-essential, phenomenal pleasures and pains have three features that suggest that they were shaped by selection, according to James: they are natively patterned, those patterns are systematically linked with antecedent brain states, and the patterns are “universal” among humans. If epiphenomenalism were true, phenomenal patterns could (...)
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  19. When mechanisms are not enough: The origin of eukaryotes and scientific explanation.Roger Deulofeu & Javier Suárez - 2018 - In Alexander Christian, David Hommen, Gerhard Schurz & N. Retzlaff (eds.), Philosophy of Science. European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 9. Dordrecht, Netherlands: pp. 95-115.
    The appeal to mechanisms in scientific explanation is commonplace in contemporary philosophy of science. In short, mechanists argue that an explanation of a phenomenon consists of citing the mechanism that brings the phenomenon about. In this paper, we present an argument that challenges the universality of mechanistic explanation: in explanations of the contemporary features of the eukaryotic cell, biologists appeal to its symbiogenetic origin and therefore the notion of symbiogenesis plays the main explanatory role. We defend the notion that symbiogenesis (...)
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  20. Age of Genetics and the age of biotechnology on the way to editing of, human genome.Valentin Teodorovich Cheshko (ed.) - 2016 - Moscow Russia: Kurs-INFRA-M.
    The book discusses some of the stages in the development of genetics, biotechnology in terms of basic strategy of humanity towards the formation of a modern agrarian civilization. Agricultural civilization is seen as part of the biosphere and primary user of its energy flows. Consistently a steps of creation of management tools for live objects to increasing the number of food security of mankind are outlines. The elements of the biosphere degradation started in the results of human activities, and the (...)
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  21. When will a Darwinian approach be useful for the study of society?Samuel Bagg - 2017 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (3):259-281.
    In recent years, some have claimed that a Darwinian perspective will revolutionize the study of human society and culture. This project is viewed with disdain and suspicion, on the other hand, by many practicing social scientists. This article seeks to clear the air in this heated debate by dissociating two claims that are too often assumed to be inseparable. The first is the ‘ontological’ claim that Darwinian principles apply, at some level of abstraction, to human society and culture. The second (...)
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  22. Modern Synthesis is the Light of Microbial Genomics.Austin Booth, Carlos Mariscal & W. Ford Doolittle - 2016 - Annual Reviews of Microbiology 70 (1):279-297.
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  23. Spontaneous emerging of material by applying the Darwin's evolutionary theory to in quantum realm and its impact on simplifying the dilemmas.Vahid Dabbagh - manuscript
    What is the boundary between the animate and inanimate world? It is obvious that the animate world is under rules of inanimate world. Is the converse true? This paper is aimed at imposing the well-known Darwin's theory of evolution to inanimate world of atomic realm where bizarre behavior of electron challenges our everyday perception of inanimate world. This paper, suggests a weird, peculiar and highly elegant speculation of existing, leads suspicious about validity of the law of conservation of mass, provides (...)
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  24. Problems for Natural Selection as a Mechanism.Joyce C. Havstad - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (3):512-523.
    Skipper and Millstein analyze natural selection and mechanism, concluding that natural selection is not a mechanism in the sense of the new mechanistic philosophy. Barros disagrees and provides his own account of natural selection as a mechanism. This discussion identifies a missing piece of Barros's account, attempts to fill in that piece, and reconsiders the revised account. Two principal objections are developed: one, the account does not characterize natural selection; two, the account is not mechanistic. Extensive and persistent variability causes (...)
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  25. Darwin's causal pluralism.Stephen T. Asma - 1996 - Biology and Philosophy 11 (1):1-20.
    Traditionally, Darwin has been grouped with the functionalists because natural selection (an adaptational mechanism) plays the prominent role in shaping organic form. In this paper, I sketch the dichotomy of functionalism versus structuralism and then argue that Darwin cannot be characterized adequately with this dichotomy. I argue that Darwin can incorporate both causal stories because he makes two important modifications to the traditional metaphysical presuppositions. I then offer some brief reflections on the import of Darwin's causal pluralism for the Philosophy (...)
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  26. It Had to Happen (a review of Simon Conway Morris’s Life’s Solution in a Lonely Universe).Elliott Sober - 2003 - The New York Times:18.
    Conway Morris argues against Stephen Jay Gould's argument that the history of life is radically contingent by describing the abundance of convergences, wherein different lineages starting in different states, arrive at the same adaptations. A standard example is the evolution of the camera eye. This review assesses the validity of Conway Morris' argument.
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Genetic Drift
  1. Selection, Drift, and the Aims of Evolutionary Theory.Timothy Shanahan - 1992 - Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 11 (1):133-161.
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  2. Empirical adaptationism revisited: is it testable and is it worth testing?Mingjun Zhang - 2022 - Biology and Philosophy 37 (6):1-23.
    Empirical adaptationism is often said to be an empirical claim about nature, which concerns the overall relative causal importance of natural selection in evolution compared with other evolutionary factors. Philosophers and biologists who have tried to clarify the meaning of empirical adaptationism usually share, explicitly or implicitly, two assumptions: (1) Empirical adaptationism is an empirical claim that is scientifically testable; (2) testing empirical adaptationism is scientifically valuable. In this article, I challenge these two assumptions and argue that both are unwarranted (...)
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  3. Cultural replication and microbial evolution.Bence Nanay - 2014 - In Gergely Csibra (ed.), Naturalistic Approaches to Culture. Akademiai.
    The aim of this paper is to argue that cultural evolution is in many ways much more similar to microbial than to macrobial biological evolution. As a result, we are better off using microbial evolution as the model of cultural evolution. And this shift from macrobial to microbial entails adjusting the theoretical models we can use for explaining cultural evolution.
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  4. Selection in a Complex World: Deriving Causality from Stable Equilibrium.Hugh Desmond - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (2):265-286.
    It is an ongoing controversy whether natural selection is a cause of population change, or a mere statistical description of how individual births and deaths accumulate. In this paper I restate the problem in terms of the reference class problem, and propose how the structure of stable equilibrium can provide a solution in continuity with biological practice. Insofar natural selection can be understood as a tendency towards equilibrium, key statisticalist criticisms are avoided. Further, in a modification of the Newtonian-force analogy, (...)
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  5. Four Pillars of Statisticalism.Denis M. Walsh, André Ariew & Mohan Matthen - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (1):1-18.
    Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...)
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  6. Drift and evolutionary forces: scrutinizing the Newtonian analogy.Víctor J. Luque - 2016 - Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 31 (3):397-410.
    This article analyzes the view of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. The analogy with Newtonian mechanics has been challenged due to the alleged mismatch between drift and the other evolutionary forces. Since genetic drift has no direction several authors tried to protect its status as a force: denying its lack of directionality, extending the notion of force and looking for a force in physics which also lacks of direction. I analyse these approaches, and although this strategy finally succeeds, (...)
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  7. Diffusion, drift and their interrelation through volume density.M. Danielewski & B. Wierzba - 2009 - Philosophical Magazine 89 (4):331-348.
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  8. in Drift wijsgerig festival.Deva Waal (ed.) - 2014 - Drift.
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  9. On the Possibility of Constructive Neutral Evolution.Arlin Stoltzfus - 1999 - Journal of Molecular Evolution 49 (2):169-181.
    The neutral theory often is presented as a theory of "noise" or silent changes at an isolated "molecular level", relevant to marking the steady pace of divergence, but not to the origin of biological structure, function, or complexity. Nevertheless, precisely these issues can be addressed in neutral models, such as those elaborated here in regard to scrambled ciliate genes, gRNA-mediated RNA editing, the transition from self-splicing to spliceosomal splicing, and the retention of duplicate genes. All of these are instances of (...)
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  10. Post-genomic musings. [REVIEW]Massimo Pigliucci - 2007 - Science 317:1172-1173.
    Everyone in biology keeps predicting that the next few years will bring answers to some of the major open questions in evolutionary biology, but there seems to be disagreement on what, exactly, those questions are. Enthusiasts of the various “-omics” (genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and even phenomics) believe, as Michael Lynch puts it in the final chapter of The Origins of Genome Architecture, that “we can be confident of two things: the basic theoretical machinery for understanding the evolutionary process is (...)
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  11. Drift: A historical and conceptual overview.Anya Plutynski - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (2):156-167.
    There are several different ways in which chance affects evolutionary change. That all of these processes are called “random genetic drift” is in part a due to common elements across these different processes, but is also a product of historical borrowing of models and language across different levels of organization in the biological hierarchy. A history of the concept of drift will reveal the variety of contexts in which drift has played an explanatory role in biology, and will shed light (...)
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  12. Drift and “Statistically Abstractive Explanation”.Mohan Matthen - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (4):464-487.
    A hitherto neglected form of explanation is explored, especially its role in population genetics. “Statistically abstractive explanation” (SA explanation) mandates the suppression of factors probabilistically relevant to an explanandum when these factors are extraneous to the theoretical project being pursued. When these factors are suppressed, the explanandum is rendered uncertain. But this uncertainty traces to the theoretically constrained character of SA explanation, not to any real indeterminacy. Random genetic drift is an artifact of such uncertainty, and it is therefore wrong (...)
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  13. The role of causal processes in the neutral and nearly neutral theories.Michael R. Dietrich & Roberta L. Millstein - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):548-559.
    The neutral and nearly neutral theories of molecular evolution are sometimes characterized as theories about drift alone, where drift is described solely as an outcome, rather than a process. We argue, however, that both selection and drift, as causal processes, are integral parts of both theories. However, the nearly neutral theory explicitly recognizes alleles and/or molecular substitutions that, while engaging in weakly selected causal processes, exhibit outcomes thought to be characteristic of random drift. A narrow focus on outcomes obscures the (...)
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  14. Chance and macroevolution.Roberta L. Millstein - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (4):603-624.
    When philosophers of physics explore the nature of chance, they usually look to quantum mechanics. When philosophers of biology explore the nature of chance, they usually look to microevolutionary phenomena, such as mutation or random drift. What has been largely overlooked is the role of chance in macroevolution. The stochastic models of paleobiology employ conceptions of chance that are similar to those at the microevolutionary level, yet different from the conceptions of chance often associated with quantum mechanics and Laplacean determinism.
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  15. Random drift and the omniscient viewpoint.Roberta L. Millstein - 1996 - Philosophy of Science 63 (3):S10-S18.
    Alexander Rosenberg (1994) claims that the omniscient viewpoint of the evolutionary process would have no need for the concept of random drift. However, his argument fails to take into account all of the processes which are considered to be instances of random drift. A consideration of these processes shows that random drift is not eliminable even given a position of omniscience. Furthermore, Rosenberg must take these processes into account in order to support his claims that evolution is deterministic and that (...)
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Exaptation
  1. Morality as an Evolutionary Exaptation.Marcus Arvan - 2021 - In Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz (eds.), Empirically Engaged Evolutionary Ethics. Springer - Synthese Library. pp. 89-109.
    The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...)
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  2. From Aristotle’s Teleology to Darwin’s Genealogy: The Stamp of Inutility, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (pdf: Contents, Introduction).Marco Solinas - 2015 - Palgrave-Macmillan.
    Starting with Aristotle and moving on to Darwin, Marco Solinas outlines the basic steps from the birth, establishment and later rebirth of the traditional view of living beings, and its overturning by evolutionary revolution. The classic framework devised by Aristotle was still dominant in the 17th Century world of Galileo, Harvey and Ray, and remained hegemonic until the time of Lamarck and Cuvier in the 19th Century. Darwin's breakthrough thus takes on the dimensions of an abandonment of the traditional finalistic (...)
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  3. L'impronta dell'inutilità. Il tramonto delle cause finali nell'impianto evoluzionistico.Marco Solinas - 2009 - Leussein (3/6):127-145.
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  4. L'impronta dell'inutilità. Dalla teleologia di Aristotele alle genealogie di Darwin (pdf: Introduzione).Marco Solinas - 2012 - ETS.
    The book aims to offer a contribution to the historiographical and conceptual reconfiguration of the evolutionary revolution in the light of the centuries-old tenets of the Aristotelian biological tradition. Darwin’s breakthrough constitutes a thorough overturning of the fixist, essentialist and teleological framework created by Aristotle, a framework still dominant in the 17th Century world of Harvey and Ray, as well as Galileo, and then hegemonic until Linnaeus and Cuvier. This change is exemplified in the morphological analysis of useless parts, such (...)
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  5. On the Possibility of Constructive Neutral Evolution.Arlin Stoltzfus - 1999 - Journal of Molecular Evolution 49 (2):169-181.
    The neutral theory often is presented as a theory of "noise" or silent changes at an isolated "molecular level", relevant to marking the steady pace of divergence, but not to the origin of biological structure, function, or complexity. Nevertheless, precisely these issues can be addressed in neutral models, such as those elaborated here in regard to scrambled ciliate genes, gRNA-mediated RNA editing, the transition from self-splicing to spliceosomal splicing, and the retention of duplicate genes. All of these are instances of (...)
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  6. Natural selection, causality, and laws: What Fodor and piatelli-palmarini got wrong.Elliott Sober - 2010 - Philosophy of Science 77 (4):594-607.
    In their book What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini construct an a priori philosophical argument and an empirical biological argument. The biological argument aims to show that natural selection is much less important in the evolutionary process than many biologists maintain. The a priori argument begins with the claim that there cannot be selection for one but not the other of two traits that are perfectly correlated in a population; it concludes that there cannot be an evolutionary (...)
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  7. What is menstruation for? On the projectibility of functional predicates in menstruation research.S. Clough - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (4):719-732.
    In 1993, biologist Margie Profet captured the attention of the popular press with the publication of her radical thesis: menstruation has a function. Traditional theories, she claims, typically view menstruation as a functionless by-product of cyclic flux. The details of Profet's functional account are similarly radical: she argues that menstruation has been naturally selected to defend the female reproductive tract from sperm-borne pathogens. There are a number of weaknesses in Profet's evolutionary analysis. However, I focus on a set of pragmatic (...)
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  8. The spandrels of self-deception: Prospects for a biological theory of a mental phenomenon.Neil Van Leeuwen - 2007 - Philosophical Psychology 20 (3):329 – 348.
    Three puzzles about self-deception make this mental phenomenon an intriguing explanatory target. The first relates to how to define it without paradox; the second is about how to make sense of self-deception in light of the interpretive view of the mental that has become widespread in philosophy; and the third concerns why it exists at all. In this paper I address the first and third puzzles. First, I define self-deception. Second, I criticize Robert Trivers' attempt to use adaptionist evolutionary psychology (...)
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Heritability
  1. Community-level evolutionary processes: Linking community genetics with replicator-interactor theory.Christopher Lean, W. Ford Doolittle & Joseph Bielawski - 2022 - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (46):e2202538119.
    Understanding community-level selection using Lewontin’s criteria requires both community-level inheritance and community-level heritability, and in the discipline of community and ecosystem genetics, these are often conflated. While there are existing studies that show the possibility of both, these studies impose community-level inheritance as a product of the experimental design. For this reason, these experiments provide only weak support for the existence of community-level selection in nature. By contrast, treating communities as interactors (in line with Hull’s replicator-interactor framework or Dawkins’s idea (...)
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