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Genetics of the Evolutionary Process

Columbia University Press (1970)

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  1. Philosophy of immunology.Bartlomiej Swiatczak & Alfred I. Tauber - 2020 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2020.
    Philosophy of immunology is a subfield of philosophy of biology dealing with ontological and epistemological issues related to the studies of the immune system. While speculative investigations and abstract analyses have always been part of immune theorizing, until recently philosophers have largely ignored immunology. Yet the implications for understanding the philosophical basis of organismal functions framed by immunity offer new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology and medicine. Developed in the context of history of medicine, theoretical biology, and medical anthropology, (...)
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  • Beyond quantitative and qualitative traits: three telling cases in the life sciences.Davide Serpico - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (3):1-26.
    This paper challenges the common assumption that some phenotypic traits are quantitative while others are qualitative. The distinction between these two kinds of traits is widely influential in biological and biomedical research as well as in scientific education and communication. This is probably due to both historical and epistemological reasons. However, the quantitative/qualitative distinction involves a variety of simplifications on the genetic causes of phenotypic variability and on the development of complex traits. Here, I examine three cases from the life (...)
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  • Identifying Behavioral Novelty.Rachael L. Brown - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (2):135-148.
    Although there is no in-principle impediment to an EvoDevo of behavior, such an endeavor is not as straightforward as one might think; many of the key terms and concepts used in EvoDevo are tailored to suit its traditional focus on morphology, and are consequently difficult to apply to behavior. In this light, the application of the EvoDevo conceptual toolkit to the behavioral domain requires the establishment of a set of tractable concepts that are readily applicable to behavioral characters. Here, I (...)
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  • Organic Selection and Social Heredity: The Original Baldwin Effect Revisited.Nam Le - 2019 - Artificial Life Conference Proceedings 2019 (31):515-522.
    The so-called “Baldwin Effect” has been studied for years in the fields of Artificial Life, Cognitive Science, and Evolutionary Theory across disciplines. This idea is often conflated with genetic assimilation, and has raised controversy in trans-disciplinary scientific discourse due to the many interpretations it has. This paper revisits the “Baldwin Effect” in Baldwin’s original spirit from a joint historical, theoretical and experimental approach. Social Heredity – the inheritance of cultural knowledge via non-genetic means in Baldwin’s term – is also taken (...)
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  • The Nature of Race: the Genealogy of the Concept and the Biological Construct’s Contemporaneous Utility.John Fuerst - 2015 - Open Behavioral Genetics.
    Racial constructionists, anti-naturalists, and anti-realists have challenged users of the biological race concept to provide and defend, from the perspective of biology, biological philosophy, and ethics, a biologically informed concept of race. In this paper, an ontoepistemology of biology is developed. What it is, by this, to be "biological real" and "biologically meaningful" and to represent a "biological natural division" is explained. Early 18th century race concepts are discussed in detail and are shown to be both sensible and not greatly (...)
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  • Czy współczesne nauki przyrodnicze mogą inspirować filozoficzny i teologiczny namysł nad przyczynowością?Mariusz Tabaczek - 2018 - Scientia et Fides 6 (2):147-180.
    Can Contemporary Science Inspire Philosophical and Theological Reflection on Causality? The cooperation between natural science, philosophy, and theology in an analysis of the causal structure and co-dependency of entities in the universe seems to be both legitimate and expected. It turns out, however, that in practice it oftentimes raises some tensions, questions and difficulties, leading to the development of alternative and in a sense competitive models of causality and of God’s action in the world. What is more, the attitude of (...)
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  • Typology and Natural Kinds in Evo-Devo.Ingo Brigandt - 2021 - In Nuño De La Rosa Laura & Müller Gerd (eds.), Evolutionary Developmental Biology: A Reference Guide. Springer. pp. 483-493.
    The traditional practice of establishing morphological types and investigating morphological organization has found new support from evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), especially with respect to the notion of body plans. Despite recurring claims that typology is at odds with evolutionary thinking, evo-devo offers mechanistic explanations of the evolutionary origin, transformation, and evolvability of morphological organization. In parallel, philosophers have developed non-essentialist conceptions of natural kinds that permit kinds to exhibit variation and undergo change. This not only facilitates a construal of species (...)
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  • Introduction and Institutionalization of Genetics in Mexico Ana Barahona, Susana Pinar and Francisco J. Ayala.Ana Barahona, Susana Pinar & Francisco J. Ayala - 2005 - Journal of the History of Biology 38 (2):273-299.
    We explore the distinctive characteristics of Mexico's society, politics and history that impacted the establishment of genetics in Mexico, as a new disciplinary field that began in the early 20th century and was consolidated and institutionalized in the second half. We identify about three stages in the institutionalization of genetics in Mexico. The first stage can be characterized by Edmundo Taboada, who was the leader of a research program initiated during the Cárdenas government (1934-1940), which was primarily directed towards improving (...)
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  • Thomistic Response to the Theory of Evolution: Aquinas on Natural Selection and the Perfection of the Universe.Mariusz Tabaczek - 2015 - Theology and Science 13 (3):325-344.
    Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas assumes the reality of the evolution of species. Their systems of thought, however, remain open to the new data, offering an essential contribution to the ongoing debate between scientific, philosophical, and theological aspects of the theory of evolution. After discussing some key issues of substance metaphysics in its encounter with the theory of evolution (hylomorphism, transformism of species, teleology, chance, the principle of proportionate causation), I present a Thomistic response to its major hypotheses. Concerning the philosophy (...)
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  • A hierarchy of species concepts: the denouement in the saga of the species problem.R. L. Mayden - 1997 - In M. F. Claridge, H. A. Dawah & M. R. Wilson (eds.), Species: The units of diversity,. Chapman & Hall. pp. 381–423.
    At least 22 concepts of species are in use today and many of these are notably incompatible in their accounts of biological diversity. Much of the traditional turmoil embodied in the species problem ultimately derives from the packaging of inappropriate criteria for species into a single concept. This results from a traditional conflation of function of concepts with their applications, definitions with concepts, taxonomic categories with groups, and the ontological status of real species with teleological approaches to recover them. Analogous (...)
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  • Clines, Clusters, and Clades in the Race Debate.Matthew Kopec - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (5):1053-1065.
    Although there once was a general consensus among race scholars that applying race categories to humans is biologically illegitimate, this consensus has been erased over the past decade. This is largely due to advances in population genetics that allow biologists to pick out genetic population clusters that approximate some of our common sense racial categories. In this paper, I argue that this new ability really ought not undermine our confidence in the biological illegitimacy of the human races. Unfortunately, the claim (...)
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  • (1 other version)Biological Species: Natural Kinds, Individuals, or What?Ruse Michael - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (2):225-242.
    What are biological species? Aristotelians and Lockeans agree that they are natural kinds; but, evolutionary theory shows that neither traditional philosophical approach is truly adequate. Recently, Michael Ghiselin and David Hull have argued that species are individuals. This claim is shown to be against the spirit of much modern biology. It is concluded that species are natural kinds of a sort, and that any 'objectivity' they possess comes from their being at the focus of a consilience of inductions.
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  • (1 other version)Landscapes, surfaces, and morphospaces: what are they good for?Massimo Pigliucci - 2012 - In Erik Svensson & Ryan Calsbeek (eds.), The Adaptive Landscape in Evolutionary Biology. Oxford University Press.
    Few metaphors in biology are more enduring than the idea of Adaptive Landscapes, originally proposed by Sewall Wright (1932) as a way to visually present to an audience of typically non- mathematically savvy biologists his ideas about the relative role of natural selection and genetic drift in the course of evolution. The metaphor, how- ever, was born troubled, not the least reason for which is the fact that Wright presented different diagrams in his original paper that simply can- not refer (...)
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  • The new mutation theory of phenotypic evolution.Masatoshi Nei - 2007 - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104 (30):12335-12242.
    Recent studies of developmental biology have shown that the genes controlling phenotypic characters expressed in the early stage of development are highly conserved and that recent evolutionary changes have occurred primarily in the characters expressed in later stages of development. Even the genes controlling the latter characters are generally conserved, but there is a large component of neutral or nearly neutral genetic variation within and between closely related species. Phenotypic evolution occurs primarily by mutation of genes that interact with one (...)
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  • Epigenetic landscaping: Waddington's use of cell fate bifurcation diagrams. [REVIEW]Scott F. Gilbert - 1991 - Biology and Philosophy 6 (2):135-154.
    From the 1930s through the 1970s, C. H. Waddington attempted to reunite genetics, embryology, and evolution. One of the means to effect this synthesis was his model of the epigenetic landscape. This image originally recast genetic data in terms of embryological diagrams and was used to show the identity of genes and inducers and to suggest the similarities between embryological and genetic approaches to development. Later, the image became more complex and integrated gene activity and mutations. These revised epigenetic landscapes (...)
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  • Monophyly, paraphyly, and natural kinds.Olivier Rieppel - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):465-487.
    A long-standing debate has dominated systematic biology and the ontological commitments made by its theories. The debate has contrasted individuals and the part – whole relationship with classes and the membership relation. This essay proposes to conceptualize the hierarchy of higher taxa is terms of a hierarchy of homeostatic property cluster natural kinds (biological species remain largely excluded from the present discussion). The reference of natural kind terms that apply to supraspecific taxa is initially fixed descriptively; the extension of those (...)
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  • Evolution by means of natural selection without reproduction: revamping Lewontin’s account.François Papale - 2020 - Synthese 198 (11):10429-10455.
    This paper analyzes recent attempts to reject reproduction with lineage formation as a necessary condition for evolution by means of natural selection :560–570, 2008; Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 42:106–114, 2011; Bourrat in Biol Philos 29:517–538, 2014; Br J Philos Sci 66:883–903, 2015; Charbonneau in Philos Sci 81:727–740, 2014; Doolittle and Inkpen in Proc Natl Acad Sci 115:4006–4014, 2018). Building on the strengths of these attempts and avoiding their pitfalls, it is argued that (...)
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  • (1 other version)Die Architektur der Synthese. Entstehung und Philosophie der modernen Evolutionstheorie.Marcel Weber - 1996 - Dissertation, University of Konstanz
    This Ph.D. thesis provides a pilosophical account of the structure of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. The first, more historical part analyses how classical genetics came to be integrated into evolutionary thinking, highlighting in particular the importance of chromosomal mapping of Drosophila strains collected in the wild by Dobzansky, but also the work of Goldschmidt, Sumners, Timofeeff-Ressovsky and others. The second, more philosophical part attempts to answer the question wherein the unity of the synthesis consisted. I argue (...)
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  • Environmental Ethics.Roberta L. Millstein - 2013 - In Kostas Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: a Companion for Educators. Dordrecht: Springer.
    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 (...)
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  • Technology and the Foundations of Biology.Josué A. Núñez & Rodrigo J. De Marco - 2007 - Biological Theory 2 (2):194-199.
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  • Darwinism.James Lennox - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Darwinism designates a distinctive form of evolutionary explanation for the history and diversity of life on earth. Its original formulation is provided in the first edition of On the Origin of Species in 1859. This entry first formulates ‘Darwin's Darwinism’ in terms of five philosophically distinctive themes: (i) probability and chance, (ii) the nature, power and scope of selection, (iii) adaptation and teleology, (iv) nominalism vs. essentialism about species and (v) the tempo and mode of evolutionary change. Both Darwin and (...)
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  • The importance of prediction testing in evolutionary biology.MaryB Williams - 1982 - Erkenntnis 17 (3):291 - 306.
    It is clear from the above discussion that if I had wished to do so I could have truthfully presented every paper as either testing a prediction, presenting evidence needed in the test of a prediction, or presentin a D-N explanation. (I would not have been able to do this if I had not been sufficiently familiar with the evolutionary literature to recognize what hypotheses were at stake in several of the papers; even when the authors mention the hypotheses they (...)
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  • The semantic approach to evolutionary theory.Marc Ereshefsky - 1991 - Biology and Philosophy 6 (1):59-80.
    Paul Thompson, John Beatty, and Elisabeth Lloyd argue that attempts to resolve certain conceptual issues within evolutionary biology have failed because of a general adherence to the received view of scientific theories. They maintain that such issues can be clarified and resolved when one adopts a semantic approach to theories. In this paper, I argue that such conceptual issues are just as problematic on a semantic approach. Such issues arise from the complexity involved in providing formal accounts of theoretical laws (...)
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  • The notion of progress in evolutionary biology – the unresolved problem and an empirical suggestion.Bernd Rosslenbroich - 2006 - Biology and Philosophy 21 (1):41-70.
    Modern biology is ambivalent about the notion of evolutionary progress. Although most evolutionists imply in their writings that they still understand large-scale macroevolution as a somewhat progressive process, the use of the term “progress” is increasingly criticized and avoided. The paper shows that this ambivalence has a long history and results mainly from three problems: (1) The term “progress” carries historical, theoretical and social implications which are not congruent with modern knowledge of the course of evolution; (2) An incongruence exists (...)
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  • The propensity interpretation of fitness.Susan K. Mills & John H. Beatty - 1979 - Philosophy of Science 46 (2):263-286.
    The concept of "fitness" is a notion of central importance to evolutionary theory. Yet the interpretation of this concept and its role in explanations of evolutionary phenomena have remained obscure. We provide a propensity interpretation of fitness, which we argue captures the intended reference of this term as it is used by evolutionary theorists. Using the propensity interpretation of fitness, we provide a Hempelian reconstruction of explanations of evolutionary phenomena, and we show why charges of circularity which have been levelled (...)
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  • World population prospects: the impact of ecological and genetic factors on human population growth in the 21st century.A. Falek & M. J. Konner - 1999 - Global Bioethics 12 (1-4):31-41.
    James V. Neel, one of the leading human geneticists of the 21st Century, has long been concerned about the consequences of human overpopulation and the accompanying destruction of the earth's ecosystem. His point of view, summarized in this paper, is contrasted with some recent optimistic projections presented by demographers and population biologists who believe the population bomb has been defused by evidence of a decrease in worldwide fertility along with a significant increase in food production. The authors of this paper (...)
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  • Evolutionary Chance Mutation: A Defense of the Modern Synthesis' Consensus View.Francesca Merlin - 2010 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 2 (20130604).
    One central tenet of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis , and the consensus view among biologists until now, is that all genetic mutations occur by “chance” or at “random” with respect to adaptation. However, the discovery of some molecular mechanisms enhancing mutation rate in response to environmental conditions has given rise to discussions among biologists, historians and philosophers of biology about the “chance” vs “directed” character of mutations . In fact, some argue that mutations due to a particular kind of mutator (...)
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  • Retelling Experiments: H. B. D. Kettlewell’s Studies of Industrial Melanism in Peppered Moths. [REVIEW]Joel B. Hagen - 1999 - Biology and Philosophy 14 (1):39-54.
    H. B. D. Kettlewell's field experiments on industrial melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia, have become the best known demonstration of natural selection in action. I argue that textbook accounts routinely portray this research as an example of controlled experimentation, even though this is historically misleading. I examine how idealized accounts of Kettlewell's research have been used by professional biologists and biology teachers. I also respond to some criticisms of David Rudge to my earlier discussions of this case study, (...)
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  • Testability of the role of natural selection within theories of population genetics and evolution.Gerhard D. Wassermann - 1978 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29 (3):223-242.
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  • Speciation Post Synthesis: 1960–2000.Anya Plutynski - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):569-596.
    Speciation—the origin of new species—has been one of the most active areas of research in evolutionary biology, both during, and since the Modern Synthesis. While the Modern Synthesis certainly shaped research on speciation in significant ways, providing a core framework, and set of categories and methods to work with, the history of work on speciation since the mid-twentieth century is a history of divergence and diversification. This piece traces this divergence, through both theoretical advances, and empirical insights into how different (...)
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  • Why development matters.Rachael L. Brown - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (6):889-899.
    Günter Wagner’s Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation is a compelling, and empirically well-supported account of the evolution of character identity and character origination which emphasizes the importance of homology and novelty as central explananda for 21st century evolutionary biology. In this essay review, I focus on the similarities and differences between the structuralist picture of evolutionary biology advocated by Wagner, and that presented by standard evolutionary theory. First, I outline the ways in which Wagner’s genetic theory of homology diverges from (...)
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  • Is indeterminism the source of the statistical character of evolutionary theory?Leslie Graves, Barbara L. Horan & Alex Rosenberg - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (1):140-157.
    We argue that Brandon and Carson's (1996) "The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory" fails to identify any indeterminism that would require evolutionary theory to be a statistical or probabilistic theory. Specifically, we argue that (1) their demonstration of a mechanism by which quantum indeterminism might "percolate up" to the biological level is irrelevant; (2) their argument that natural selection is indeterministic because it is inextricably connected with drift fails to join the issue with determinism; and (3) their view that experimental (...)
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  • Who are We, and Who (or What) Do We Want to Become? An Evolutionary Perspective on Biotransformative Technologies.James Lyons-Weiler - 2022 - Biological Theory 17 (2):138-152.
    Human evolution sits at several important thresholds. In organic evolution, interplay between exogenous environmental and genetic factors rendered new phenotypes at rates limited by genetic variation. The interplay took place on adaptive fitness landscapes determined by correspondence of genetic and environmental relationships. Human evolution involved important emergences that altered the adaptive landscape: language, writing, organized societies, science, and the internet. These endogenous factors ushered in transformative periods leading to more rapidly evolving emergences. I explore the impact of development of emerging (...)
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  • (1 other version)A discussion about the limits of the species concept.Mariano Martín Villuendas - 2019 - Humanities Journal of Valparaiso 14:241-273.
    The conceptual dilemma that species entail has divided, since its formulation, biologists and philosophers in two spheres: those who believe in the existence of a unified category of species and those who defend the unyielding plurality of equally legitimate concepts. The aim of this paper is to comprise the analysis of the problems that revolve around the species category with the only purpose being to determine the existence of only one univocal and unrestricted definition of species. For this reason, the (...)
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  • Punctuated equilibria and phyletic gradualism: Even partners can be good friends.J. C. Von Vaupel Klein - 1994 - Acta Biotheoretica 42 (1):15-48.
    The allegedly alternative theories of Phyletic Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibria are examined as regards the nature of their differences. The explanatory value of both models is determined by establishing their actual connection with reality. It is concluded that they are to be considered complementary rather than mutually exclusive at all levels of infraspecific, specific, and supraspecific evolution. So, in order to be described comprehensively, the pathways of evolution require at least two distinct models, each based on a discrete range of (...)
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  • Phyletic Gradualism versus Punctuated Equilibria: Why case histories do not suffice.J. C. Von Vaupel Klein - 1995 - Acta Biotheoretica 43 (3):259-278.
    Many attempts have been made at supporting either one of the allegedly complementary divergence models Phyletic Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibria by patterns found in specific fossil sequences. However, assessing each model's connection with reality via such “individual case histories” appears not to constitute a relevant approach. Instead, in order to correctly establish the possible merits of both concepts, the claims of each have to be verified against general evolutionary theory. This is being pointed out herein by analyzing cladogenesis at the (...)
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  • Evolutionism and Common Sense. Notes on the History of Biology.António B. Vieira - 2017 - Kairos 19 (1):15-35.
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  • Aristotelian Species Pluralism.Justin Bzovy - unknown
    Species pluralism allows for multiple species concepts. Given the overwhelming number of such concepts, this seems like an obvious interpretation of how `species' is used in contemporary biology. But why has it taken so long for this approach to be considered? I argue that part of the reason pluralism was overlooked due to the widespread use of a particular rhetorical strategy developed by Ernst Mayr. This strategy provided a framework for debates about the correct conception of species. That is, the (...)
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  • Species Pluralism: Conceptual, Ontological, and Practical Dimensions.Justin Bzovy - unknown
    Species are central to biology, but there is currently no agreement on what the adequate species concept should be, and many have adopted a pluralist stance: different species concepts will be required for different purposes. This thesis is a multidimensional analysis of species pluralism. First I explicate how pluralism differs monism and relativism. I then consider the history of species pluralism. I argue that we must re-frame the species problem, and that re-evaluating Aristotle's role in the histories of systematics can (...)
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  • Explanatory unification and conceptualization.Stefan Petkov - 2015 - Synthese 192 (11):3695-3717.
    There are several important criticisms against the unificationist model of scientific explanation: Unification is a broad and heterogeneous notion and it is hard to see how a model of explanation based exclusively on unification can make a distinction between genuine explanatory unification from cases of ordering or classification. Unification alone cannot solve the asymmetry and irrelevance problems. Unification and explanation pull in different directions and should be decoupled, because for good scientific explanation extra ad explanandum information is often required. I (...)
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  • Can abstractions be causes?David M. Johnson - 1990 - Biology and Philosophy 5 (1):63-77.
    The Empiricist or Lockean view says natural kinds do not exist objectively in nature but are practical categories reflecting use of words. The Modern, Ostensive view says they do exist, and one can refer to such a kind by ostention and recursion, assuming his designation of it is related causally to the kind itself. However, this leads to a problem: Kinds are abstract repeatables, and it seems impossible that abstractions could have causal force. In defence of the Modern view, I (...)
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  • Sources of evolutionary contingency: chance variation and genetic drift.T. Y. William Wong - 2020 - Biology and Philosophy 35 (4):1-33.
    Contingency-theorists have gestured to a series of phenomena such as random mutations or rare Armageddon-like events as that which accounts for evolutionary contingency. These phenomena constitute a class, which may be aptly called the ‘sources of contingency’. In this paper, I offer a probabilistic conception of what it is to be a source of contingency and then examine two major candidates: chance variation and genetic drift, both of which have historically been taken to be ‘chancy’ in a number of different (...)
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  • Abduction and styles of scientific thinking.Mariana Vitti Rodrigues & Claus Emmeche - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):1397-1425.
    In philosophy of science, the literature on abduction and the literature on styles of thinking have existed almost totally in parallel. Here, for the first time, we bring them together and explore their mutual relevance. What is the consequence of the existence of several styles of scientific thinking for abduction? Can abduction, as a general creative mode of inference, have distinct characteristic forms within each style? To investigate this, firstly, we present the concept of abduction; secondly we analyze what is (...)
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  • The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis.David J. Depew & Bruce H. Weber - 2011 - Biological Theory 6 (1):89-102.
    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 (...)
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  • The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part II: The Synthesis and Since.John Beatty - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):705-731.
    This is the second of a two-part essay on the history of debates concerning the creativity of natural selection, from Darwin through the evolutionary synthesis and up to the present. In the first part, I focussed on the mid-late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, with special emphasis on early Darwinism and its critics, the self-styled “mutationists.” The second part focuses on the evolutionary synthesis and some of its critics, especially the “neutralists” and “neo-mutationists.” Like Stephen Gould, I consider the (...)
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  • Answers to these comments.Ernst Mayr - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (2):212-225.
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  • Bergmann’s Rule, Adaptation, and Thermoregulation in Arctic Animals: Conflicting Perspectives from Physiology, Evolutionary Biology, and Physical Anthropology After World War II.Joel B. Hagen - 2017 - Journal of the History of Biology 50 (2):235-265.
    Bergmann’s rule and Allen’s rule played important roles in mid-twentieth century discussions of adaptation, variation, and geographical distribution. Although inherited from the nineteenth-century natural history tradition these rules gained significance during the consolidation of the modern synthesis as evolutionary theorists focused attention on populations as units of evolution. For systematists, the rules provided a compelling rationale for identifying geographical races or subspecies, a function that was also picked up by some physical anthropologists. More generally, the rules provided strong evidence for (...)
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  • The composite species concept: a rigorous basis for cladistic practice.D. J. Kornet & James W. McAllister - 2005 - In Thomas A. C. Reydon & Lia Hemerik (eds.), Current Themes in Theoretical Biology : A Dutch Perspective. Springer. pp. 95--127.
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  • The darwin/gray correspondence 1857–1869: An intelligent discussion about chance and design.James G. Lennox - 2010 - Perspectives on Science 18 (4):456-479.
    This essay outlines one aspect of a larger collaboration with John Beatty and Alan Love.2 The project’s focus is philosophical, but for reasons that will become clear momentarily, the method of approach is historical. All three of us share the conviction that philosophical issues concerning the foundations of the sciences are often illuminated by investigating their history. It is my hope that this paper both provides support for that thesis, and illustrates it. The focal philosophical issue can be stated in (...)
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  • What is Life? Among Other Things, It's a Synergistic Effect!Peter Corning - 2008 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 4 (1-2):233-243.
    There have been many different ways of characterizing and describing the phenomenon of life over the years. One aspect that has not often been stressed is lifersquo;s emergent propertiesmdash;the synergies that are produced when many elements or parts combine to produce distinctive new ldquo;wholesrdquo;. Indeed, complex living systems represent a multi-leveled, multi-faceted hierarchy of synergistic effects that has evolved over several billion years. Some of the many examples of synergy at various levels of life are briefly described, and it is (...)
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