It is an unfortunate fact of academic life that there is a sharp divide between science and philosophy, with scientists often being openly dismissive of philosophy, and philosophers being equally contemptuous of the naivete ́ of scientists when it comes to the philosophical underpinnings of their own discipline. In this paper I explore the possibility of reducing the distance between the two sides by introducing science students to some interesting philosophical aspects of research in evolutionary biology, using biological theories of (...) the origin of religion as an example. I show that philosophy is both a discipline in its own right as well as one that has interesting implications for the understanding and practice of science. While the goal is certainly not to turn science students into philoso- phers, the idea is that both disciplines cannot but benefit from a mutual dialogue that starts as soon as possible, in the classroom. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the neo-Aristotelian approaches, which usually reinterpret Aristotle’s ideas on form and/or borrow the notion of formal cause without engaging with the broader implications of Aristotle’s metaphysics. In opposition to these approaches, I claim that biosemiotics can propose an alternative view on life’s form. Specifically, I examine the proposals to replace the formal cause with gene-centrism, functionalism, and structuralism. After critically addressing these approaches, I discuss the problems of reconciling Aristotelianism with the modern view of life’s (...) organization. I claim that the notion of the final cause proposes a cosmological hierarchy and that this is the main problem with applying the formal cause to biology. An alternative categorization of conceptualizing life’s form involves the processual identity, relational property clusters, and context-dependent transmission of representational units. The third category points to a semiotic basis of the form of life. In this context, I offer to readjust the focus of the problem of matter-form duality by pointing out that form is primarily an issue of the subject-object relation. Biosemiotics helps to understand the constructive role of symbolic representation in living systems, which is crucial to extend the analysis of the form from cognitive representations to external phenomena. Emergence of subjectivity and perspectivity of interactions are key elements to bridge the form and actual processes within a non-hylomorphic account. To demonstrate transitions from the physical influence of shapes to the organic recognition of forms, I address the biological studies on the synchronization of coincidental inputs and enzyme specificity. (shrink)

Adaptation is one of the central concepts in evolutionary theory, which nonetheless has been given different definitions. Some scholars support a historical definition of adaptation, considering it as a trait that is the outcome of natural selection, whereas others support an ahistorical definition, considering it as a trait that contributes to the survival and reproduction of its possessors. Finally, adaptation has been defined as a process, as well. Consequently, two questions arise: the first is a philosophical one and focuses on (...) what adaptation actually is; the second is a pedagogical one and focuses on what science teachers and educators should teach about it. In this article, the various definitions of adaptation are discussed and their uses in some textbooks are presented. It is suggested that, given elementary students’ intuitions about purpose and design in nature and secondary students’ teleological explanations for the origin of adaptations, any definition of adaptation as a trait should include some information about its evolutionary history. (shrink)

We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes. We go on to discuss two conceptual issues: whether natural selection can be the “creative factor” in a new, more general framework (...) for evolutionary theorizing; and whether in such a framework organisms must be conceived as self-organizing systems embedded in self-organizing ecological systems. (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)

A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)