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Units of evolution: a metaphysical essay

In Uffe Juul Jensen & Rom Harré (eds.), The Philosophy of evolution. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 23--44 (1981)

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  1. The Origins of Species Concepts.John Simpson Wilkins - 2003 - Dissertation, University of Melbourne
    The longstanding species problem in biology has a history that suggests a solution, and that history is not the received history found in many texts written by biologists or philosophers. The notion of species as the division into subordinate groups of any generic predicate was the staple of logic from Aristotle through the middle ages until quite recently. However, the biological species concept during the same period was at first subtly and then overtly different. Unlike the logic sense, which relied (...)
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  • Evolutionary Epistemology: Two Research Avenues, Three Schools, and A Single and Shared Agenda.Nathalie Gontier & Michael Bradie - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (2):197-209.
    This special issue for the Journal for General Philosophy of Science is devoted to exploring the impact and many ramifications of current research in evolutionary epistemology. Evolutionary epistemology is an inter- and multidisciplinary area of research that can be divided into two ever-inclusive research avenues. One research avenue expands on the EEM program and investigates the epistemology of evolution. The other research avenue builds on the EET program and researches the evolution of epistemology. Since its conception, EE has developed three (...)
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  • Hierarchies, Networks, and Causality: The Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach.Nathalie Gontier - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (2):313-334.
    Applied Evolutionary Epistemology is a scientific-philosophical theory that defines evolution as the set of phenomena whereby units evolve at levels of ontological hierarchies by mechanisms and processes. This theory also provides a methodology to study evolution, namely, studying evolution involves identifying the units that evolve, the levels at which they evolve, and the mechanisms and processes whereby they evolve. Identifying units and levels of evolution in turn requires the development of ontological hierarchy theories, and examining mechanisms and processes necessitates theorizing (...)
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  • Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A new methodology to enhance interdisciplinary research between the human and natural sciences.Nathalie Gontier - 2012 - Kairos 1 (4):7-49.
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  • Universal symbiogenesis: a genuine alternative to universal selectionist accounts.Nathalie Gontier - 2007 - Symbiosis 1 (44):167-181.
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  • What are the levels and mechanisms/processes of language evolution?Nathalie Gontier - 2017 - Language Sciences 1 (63):12-43.
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  • The hologenome concept of evolution: a philosophical and biological study.Javier Suárez - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Exeter
    The hologenome concept of evolution is a hypothesis about the evolution of animals and plants. It asserts that the evolution of animals and plants was partially triggered by their interactions with their symbiotic microbiomes. In that vein, the hologenome concept posits that the holobiont (animal host + symbionts of the microbiome) is a unit of selection. -/- The hologenome concept has been severely criticized on the basis that selection on holobionts would only be possible if there were a tight transgenerational (...)
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  • Pointing and the Evolution of Language: An Applied Evolutionary Epistemological Approach.Nathalie Gontier - 2013 - Humana Mente 6 (24).
    Numerous evolutionary linguists have indicated that human pointing behaviour might be associated with the evolution of language. At an ontogenetic level, and in normal individuals, pointing develops spontaneously and the onset of human pointing precedes as well as facilitates phases in speech and language development. Phylogenetically, pointing behaviour might have preceded and facilitated the evolutionary origin of both gestural and vocal language. Contrary to wild non-human primates, captive and human-reared nonhuman primates also demonstrate pointing behaviour. In this article, we analyse (...)
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  • Ecology, Evolution, Ethics: In Search of a Meta-paradigm – An Introduction.Donato Bergandi - 2013 - In The Structural Links Between Ecology, Evolution and Ethics: The Virtuous Epistemic Circle. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 1-28.
    Evolutionary, ecological and ethical studies are, at the same time, specific scientific disciplines and, from an historical point of view, structurally linked domains of research. In a context of environmental crisis, the need is increasingly emerging for a connecting epistemological framework able to express a common or convergent tendency of thought and practice aimed at building, among other things, an environmental policy management respectful of the planet’s biodiversity and its evolutionary potential.
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  • Towards a hierarchical definition of life, the organism, and death.Gerard Ajm Jagers Op Akkerhuis - 2010 - Foundations of Science 15 (3):245-262.
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  • Introducing universal symbiogenesis.Nathalie Gontier - 2012 - In Torres Juan, Pombo Olga, Symons John & Rahman Shahid (eds.), Special sciences and the Unity of Science. Springer. pp. 89--111.
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  • Group selection: The theory replaces the bogey man.David Sloan Wilson & Elliott Sober - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):639-654.
    In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to (...)
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  • Groups as vehicles and replicators: The problem of group-level adaptation.Kent E. Holsinger - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):626-627.
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  • The consequences of group selection in a domain without genetic input: Culture.C. Loring Brace - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):611-612.
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  • Reintroducing group selection to the human behavioral sciences.David Sloan Wilson & Elliott Sober - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):585-608.
    In both biology and the human sciences, social groups are sometimes treated as adaptive units whose organization cannot be reduced to individual interactions. This group-level view is opposed by a more individualistic one that treats social organization as a byproduct of self-interest. According to biologists, group-level adaptations can evolve only by a process of natural selection at the group level. Most biologists rejected group selection as an important evolutionary force during the 1960s and 1970s but a positive literature began to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Heritability.Stephen M. Downes - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Selection without replicators: the origin of genes, and the replicator/interactor distinction in etiobiology.John S. Wilkins, Ian Musgrave & Clem Stanyon - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (2):215-239.
    Genes are thought to have evolved from long-lived and multiply-interactive molecules in the early stages of the origins of life. However, at that stage there were no replicators, and the distinction between interactors and replicators did not yet apply. Nevertheless, the process of evolution that proceeded from initial autocatalytic hypercycles to full organisms was a Darwinian process of selection of favourable variants. We distinguish therefore between Neo-Darwinian evolution and the related Weismannian and Central Dogma divisions, on the one hand, and (...)
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  • Two Purposes of Black Hole Production.Clément Vidal - 2012 - Foundations of Science 17 (1):13-15.
    Crane envisions the speculative conjecture that intelligent civilizations might want and be able to produce black holes in the very far future. He implicitly suggests two main purposes of this enterprise: (i) energy production and (ii) universe production. We discuss those two options. The commentary is obviously highly speculative and should be read accordingly.
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  • Popper's Darwinian analogy.Bence Nanay - 2011 - Perspectives on Science 19 (3):337-354.
    One of the most deeply entrenched ideas in Popper's philosophy is the analogy between the growth of scientific knowledge and the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection. Popper gave his first exposition of these ideas very early on. In a letter to Donald Campbell, 1 Popper says that the idea goes back at least to the early thirties. 2 And he had a fairly detailed account of it in his "What is dialectic?", a talk given in 1937 and published in 1940: (...)
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  • Replication without replicators.Bence Nanay - 2011 - Synthese 179 (3):455-477.
    According to a once influential view of selection, it consists of repeated cycles of replication and interaction. It has been argued that this view is wrong: replication is not necessary for evolution by natural selection. I analyze the nine most influential arguments for this claim and defend the replication–interaction conception of selection against these objections. In order to do so, however, the replication–interaction conception of selection needs to be modified significantly. My proposal is that replication is not the copying of (...)
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  • Evolutionary plasticity in prokaryotes: A panglossian view.Marcel Weber - 1996 - Biology and Philosophy 11 (1):67-88.
    Enzyme directed genetic mechanisms causing random DNA sequence alterations are ubiquitous in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. A number of molecular geneticist have invoked adaptation through natural selection to account for this fact, however, alternative explanations have also flourished. The population geneticist G.C. Williams has dismissed the possibility of selection for mutator activity on a priori grounds. In this paper, I attempt a refutation of Williams' argument. In addition, I discuss some conceptual problems related to recent claims made by microbiologists on (...)
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  • Units and passages: A view for evolutionary biology and ecology. [REVIEW]Masakado Kawata - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (4):415-434.
    Many authors, including paleobiologists, cladists and so on, adopt a nested hierarchical viewpoint to examine the relationships among different levels of biological organization. Furthermore, species are often considered to be unique entities in functioning evolutionary processes and one of the individuals forming a nested hierarchy.I have attempted to show that such a hierarchical view is inadequate in evolutionary biology. We should define units depending on what we are trying to explain. Units that play an important role in evolution and ecology (...)
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  • Populational heritability: Extending punnett square concepts to evolution at the metapopulation level. [REVIEW]James R. Griesemer & Michael J. Wade - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (1):1-17.
    In a previous study, using experimental metapopulations of the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, we investigated phase III of Wright's shifting balance process (Wade and Griesemer 1998). We experimentally modeled migration of varying amounts from demes of high mean fitness into demes of lower mean fitness (as in Wright's characterization of phase III) as well as the reciprocal (the opposite of phase III). We estimated the meta-populational heritability for this level of selection by regression of offspring deme means on the weighted (...)
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  • Species concepts and the ontology of evolution.Joel Cracraft - 1987 - Biology and Philosophy 2 (3):329-346.
    Biologists and philosophers have long recognized the importance of species, yet species concepts serve two masters, evolutionary theory on the one hand and taxonomy on the other. Much of present-day evolutionary and systematic biology has confounded these two roles primarily through use of the biological species concept. Theories require entities that are real, discrete, irreducible, and comparable. Within the neo-Darwinian synthesis, however, biological species have been treated as real or subjectively delimited entities, discrete or nondiscrete, and they are often capable (...)
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  • Can Cumulative Selection Explain Adaptation?Bence Nanay - 2005 - Philosophy of Science 72 (5):1099-1112.
    Two strong arguments have been given in favor of the claim that no selection process can play a role in explaining adaptations. According to the first argument, selection is a negative force; it may explain why the eliminated individuals are eliminated, but it does not explain why the ones that survived (or their offspring) have the traits they have. The second argument points out that the explanandum and the explanans are phenomena at different levels: selection is a population-level phenomenon, whereas (...)
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  • Understanding life: Recent work in philosophy of biology.Kim Sterelny - 1995 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (2):155-183.
    This paper surveys recent philosophy of biology. It aims to introduce outsiders to the field to the recent literature (which is reviewed in the footnotes) and the main recent debates. I concentrate on three of these: recent critiques of the replicator/vehicle distinction and its application to the idea of the gene as the unit of section; the recent defences of group selection and the idea that standard alternatives to group selection are in fact no more than a disguised form of (...)
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  • Symmetry between the intentionality of minds and machines? The biological plausibility of Dennett’s account.Bence Nanay - 2006 - Minds and Machines 16 (1):57-71.
    One of the most influential arguments against the claim that computers can think is that while our intentionality is intrinsic, that of computers is derived: it is parasitic on the intentionality of the programmer who designed the computer-program. Daniel Dennett chose a surprising strategy for arguing against this asymmetry: instead of denying that the intentionality of computers is derived, he endeavours to argue that human intentionality is derived too. I intend to examine that biological plausibility of Dennett’s suggestion and show (...)
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  • Evolutionary epistemology as a scientific method: a new look upon the units and levels of evolution debate.Nathalie Gontier - 2010 - Theory in Biosciences 2 (129):167-182.
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  • The Evolution of Ecosystem Phenotypes.Sébastien Ibanez - 2020 - Biological Theory 15 (2):91-106.
    Evolution by natural selection has been extended to several supraorganismic levels, but whether it can apply to ecosystems remains controversial on two main counts. First, local ecosystems are loosely individuated, so that it is unclear how they manifest heredity and fitness. Second, even if they did, the meta-ecosystem formed by this population of local ecosystems will also suffer from a very low degree of cohesion, which will jeopardize any ENS. We suggest a way to overcome both issues, focusing on ecosystem (...)
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  • Replication and reproduction.John Wilkins & Pierrick Bourrat - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Normality, Disease, and Enhancement.Theodore M. Benditt - 2007 - In Harold Kincaid & Jennifer McKitrick (eds.), Establishing medical reality: Methodological and metaphysical issues in philosophy of medicine. Springer Publishing Company. pp. 13-21.
    The vagueness or imprecision of ‘the normal’ allows it to be exploited for various purposes and political ends. It is conspicuous in both medicine and athletics; I am going to try to say something about the normal in each of these areas. In medicine the idea of the normal is often deployed in understanding what constitutes disease and hence, as some see it, in determining the role of physicians, in determining what is or ought to be covered by insurance, and (...)
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  • Genetic traits and causal explanation.Robert Northcott - 2011 - In Kathryn S. Plaisance & Thomas Reydon (eds.), Philosophy of Behavioral Biology. Springer. pp. 65-82.
    I use a contrastive theory of causal explanation to analyze the notion of a genetic trait. The resulting definition is relational, an implication of which is that no trait is genetic always and everywhere. Rather, every trait may be either genetic or non-genetic, depending on explanatory context. I also outline some other advantages of connecting the debate to the wider causation literature, including how that yields us an account of the distinction between genetic traits and genetic dispositions.
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  • Multi-Level Selection and the Explanatory Value of Mathematical Decompositions.Christopher Clarke - 2016 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (4):1025-1055.
    Do multi-level selection explanations of the evolution of social traits deepen the understanding provided by single-level explanations? Central to the former is a mathematical theorem, the multi-level Price decomposition. I build a framework through which to understand the explanatory role of such non-empirical decompositions in scientific practice. Applying this general framework to the present case places two tasks on the agenda. The first task is to distinguish the various ways of suppressing within-collective variation in fitness, and moreover to evaluate their (...)
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  • Me, you, and us: Distinguishing “egoism,” “altruism,” and “groupism”.Margaret Gilbert - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):621-622.
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  • What is Analytic Metaphysics For?James Maclaurin & Heather Dyke - 2012 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (2):291-306.
    We divide analytic metaphysics into naturalistic and non-naturalistic metaphysics. The latter we define as any philosophical theory that makes some ontological (as opposed to conceptual) claim, where that ontological claim has no observable consequences. We discuss further features of non-naturalistic metaphysics, including its methodology of appealing to intuition, and we explain the way in which we take it to be discontinuous with science. We outline and criticize Ladyman and Ross's 2007 epistemic argument against non-naturalistic metaphysics. We then present our own (...)
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  • The operator hierarchy : a chain of closures linking matter, life and artificial intelligence.G. A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis - unknown
    Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 06 september 2010.
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  • Towards a Hierarchical Definition of Life, the Organism, and Death.Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis - 2010 - Foundations of Science 15 (3):245-262.
    Despite hundreds of definitions, no consensus exists on a definition of life or on the closely related and problematic definitions of the organism and death. These problems retard practical and theoretical development in, for example, exobiology, artificial life, biology and evolution. This paper suggests improving this situation by basing definitions on a theory of a generalized particle hierarchy. This theory uses the common denominator of the “operator” for a unified ranking of both particles and organisms, from elementary particles to animals (...)
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  • The extended replicator.Kim Sterelny, Kelly C. Smith & Michael Dickison - 1996 - Biology and Philosophy 11 (3):377-403.
    This paper evaluates and criticises the developmental systems conception of evolution and develops instead an extension of the gene's eye conception of evolution. We argue (i) Dawkin's attempt to segregate developmental and evolutionary issues about genes is unsatisfactory. On plausible views of development it is arbitrary to single out genes as the units of selection. (ii) The genotype does not carry information about the phenotype in any way that distinguishes the role of the genes in development from that other factors. (...)
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  • What price optimality?Barbara L. Horan - 1992 - Biology and Philosophy 7 (1):89-109.
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  • David Hull’s Natural Philosophy of Science.Paul E. Griffiths - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (3):301-310.
    Throughout his career David Hull has sought to bring the philosophy of science into closer contact with science and especially with biological science (Hull 1969, 1997b). This effort has taken many forms. Sometimes it has meant ‘either explaining basic biology to philosophers or explaining basic philosophy to biologists’ (Hull 1996, p. 77). The first of these tasks, simple as it sounds, has been responsible for revolutionary changes. It is well known that traditional philosophy of science, modeled as it was on (...)
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  • Maynard Smith on the levels of selection question.Samir Okasha - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (5):989-1010.
    The levels of selection problem was central to Maynard Smith’s work throughout his career. This paper traces Maynard Smith’s views on the levels of selection, from his objections to group selection in the 1960s to his concern with the major evolutionary transitions in the 1990s. The relations between Maynard Smith’s position and those of Hamilton and G.C. Williams are explored, as is Maynard Smith’s dislike of the Price equation approach to multi-level selection. Maynard Smith’s account of the ‘core Darwinian principles’ (...)
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  • (1 other version)Systematics and the Darwinian revolution.Kevin de Queiroz - 1988 - Philosophy of Science 55 (2):238-259.
    Taxonomies of living things and the methods used to produce them changed little with the institutionalization of evolutionary thinking in biology. Instead, the relationships expressed in existing taxonomies were merely reinterpreted as the result of evolution, and evolutionary concepts were developed to justify existing methods. I argue that the delay of the Darwinian Revolution in biological taxonomy has resulted partly from a failure to distinguish between two fundamentally different ways of ordering identified by Griffiths : classification and systematization. Classification consists (...)
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  • (1 other version)Material Models in Biology.James R. Griesemer - 1990 - PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2):79-93.
    Propositions are no more constitutive of science than they are of any activity: a body of knowledge is not all there is to the life of science. Thus I take the premise underlying the topic of this symposium to be uncontroversial, there is a “non-propositional” side of science and of biology in particular. From time to time, however, philosophers ask whether the “non-propositional” side of science is theoretically superfluous, or as Duhem put it, logically dispensable. What they mean to ask (...)
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  • Uniting micro- with macroevolution into an Extended Synthesis: Reintegrating life’s natural history into evolution studies.Nathalie Gontier - 2015 - In Emanuele Serrelli & Nathalie Gontier (eds.), Macroevolution: Explanation, Interpretation and Evidence. Springer. pp. 227-278.
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  • (1 other version)Heritability.Stephen M. Downes & Lucas J. Matthews - 2019 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Lucas Matthews and I substantially revised my SEP entry on Heritability. This version includes discussion of the missing heritability problem and other issues that arise from the use of Genome Wide Association Studies by Behavioral Geneticists.
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  • (1 other version)Hierarchical Approaches to Genome Evolution.W. Ford Doolittle - 1988 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (sup1):101-133.
    In fact, nearly every scientist who has written on the general subject of evolution has felt compelled to show how deftly he can skate toward the abyss of teleology without falling in.J.H. Campbell, 163Molecular biology has as its primary objective the elucidation of the coupling between genotype and phenotype. This goal has so far been pursued within a neoDarwinian theoretical framework which is relatively limited. Within this framework we can indeed understand remarkably well the mechanisms of replication and expression of (...)
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  • Reconstructing the real unit of selection.Adolf Heschl - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):624-625.
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  • Taking vechicles seriously.David L. Hull - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):627-628.
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  • Seeing the light: What does biology tell us about human social behavior?C. Daniel Batson - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):610-611.
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  • Natural Selection Among Replicators, Interactors and Transactors.Donato Bergandi - 2013 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 35 (2):213-238.
    In evolutionary biology and ecology, ontological and epistemological perspectives based on the replicator and the interactor have become the background that makes it possible to transcend traditional biological levels of organization and to achieve a unified view of evolution in which replication and interaction are fundamental operating processes. Using the transactional perspective proposed originally by John Dewey and Arthur Fisher Bentley, a new ontological and methodological category is proposed here: the transactor. The transactional perspective, based on the concept of the (...)
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