The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however, Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work (...) on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since self-organizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points. (shrink)

We are concerned with two modes of describing the dynamics of natural systems. Global descriptions require simultaneous global coordination of all dynamical operations. Global dynamics, including mechanics, remain invariant in the absence of external perturbation. But, failing impossible global coordination, dynamical operations could actually become coordinated only locally. In local records, as in global ones, the law of the excluded middle would be strictly observed, but without global coordination it could only be fullfilled sequentially by passing causative factors forward onto (...) subsequent contiguous operations.The local dynamics of sequential operations would be indefinite with regard to how commitments will be made which will avoid violating the law of the excluded middle, but any resulting record will be as definite as if there had been global coordination. While maintaining an agential capacity for making contingent choices internally, local dynamics could be cumulated into a global record of seemingly simultaneous operations. Natural selection within a framework of local dynamics would have a capacity for making opportunistic commitments, but its effects in a posterior record can be reduced to the mechanistic neodarwinian version as if there had been a global dynamics. However, the resulting global description falsifies the actual material nature of the dynamics. (shrink)

The relationship between statistical mechanics and population genetics has a long history. Both take advantage of statistics to address the behavior of large groups of entities. The main objective of this article is to assess the obstacles population genetics is meeting in its claim to explain biological phenomena from the conceptual apparatus of statistical mechanics according to two recent articles. Several tools available to the latter are missing in the former. Thus, in the absence of an adequate justification of the (...) relevance of the analogy and without the satisfaction of certain basic assumptions, I argue that the explanatory strategy of the analogously based model is seriously compromised. La relation entre mécanique statistique et génétique des populations a une longue histoire. À l’instar de la première, la seconde tire profit des statistiques afin de traiter le comportement des grands ensembles d’entités. L’objectif principal du présent article est d’identifier les obstacles que rencontre la génétique des populations dans sa prétention d’explication des phénomènes biologiques à partir de l’appareillage conceptuel de la mécanique statistique selon deux articles récents. Or, plusieurs outils dont dispose cette dernière manque à la première. Ainsi, en l’absence d’une justification adéquate de la pertinence de l’analogie et sans la satisfaction de certaines hypothèses fondamentales, je soutiens que la stratégie explicative du modèle analogue est sérieusement compromise. (shrink)

The received view of Bergson's philosophy of life is that it advances some form of vitalism under the heading of an “élan vital.” This paper argues against the vitalistic interpretation of Bergson's élan vital as it appears in Creative Evolution in favor of an interpretation based on his overlooked reflections on entropy and energetics. Within the interpretation developed here, the élan vital is characterized not as a spiritualistic “vital force” but as a tendency of organization opposed to the tendency of (...) entropic degradation. It is then shown how Bergson's view of evolution and living organization resonates with more contemporary scientific approaches belonging to a “thermodynamic paradigm” in theoretical biology in different respects, including the critique of neo-Darwinism and the positing of a driving force behind evolution. Finally, the special interest that Bergson's philosophical biology bears today is considered in terms of the connection between the concepts of élan vital and duration. (shrink)