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Switch to: References
Citations of:
Systematics and the origin of species from the viewpoint of a zoologist
Columbia University Press (1942)
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What does it look like when a group of scientists set out to re-envision an entire field of biology in symbolic and formal terms? I analyze the founding and articulation of Numerical Taxonomy between 1950 and 1970, the period when it set out a radical new approach to classification and founded a tradition of mathematics in systematic biology. I argue that introducing mathematics in a comprehensive way also requires re-organizing the daily work of scientists in the field. Numerical taxonomists sought (...) |
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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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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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Speciation is an aspect of evolutionary biology that has received little philosophical attention apart from articles mainly by biologists such as Mayr (1988). The role of speciation as a terminus a quo for the individuality of species or in the context of punctuated equilibrium theory has been discussed, but not the nature of speciation events themselves. It is the task of this paper to attempt to bring speciation events into some kind of general scheme, based primarily upon the work of (...) |
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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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The biological species (biospecies) concept applies only to sexually reproducing species, which means that until sexual reproduction evolved, there were no biospecies. On the universal tree of life, biospecies concepts therefore apply only to a relatively small number of clades, notably plants andanimals. I argue that it is useful to treat the various ways of being a species (species modes) as traits of clades. By extension from biospecies to the other concepts intended to capture the natural realities of what keeps (...) |
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This paper contributes to two debates: the debate about language evolution and the debate about the foundations of human collaboration. While both cooperation and language may give the impression of being adaptations that evolved for the “good of the group,” it is well established that the evolution of complex traits cannot be a direct result of group selection. In this paper I suggest how this tension can be solved: both language and cooperation evolved in a unique two-level evolutionary system which (...) |
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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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Many phylogenetic systematists have criticized the Biological Species Concept (BSC) because it distorts evolutionary history. While defenses against this particular criticism have been attempted, I argue that these responses are unsuccessful. In addition, I argue that the source of this problem leads to previously unappreciated, and deeper, fatal objections. These objections to the BSC also straightforwardly apply to other species concepts that are not defined by genealogical history. What is missing from many previous discussions is the fact that the Tree (...) |
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Welch :263–279, 2017) has recently proposed two possible explanations for why the field of evolutionary biology is plagued by a steady stream of claims that it needs urgent reform. It is either seriously deficient and incapable of incorporating ideas that are new, relevant and plausible or it is not seriously deficient at all but is prone to attracting discontent and to the championing of ideas that are not very relevant, plausible and/or not really new. He argues for the second explanation. (...) |
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Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, also sheds new light (...) |
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Historians tend to speak of the problem of the origin of species or the species question, as if it were a monolithic problem. In reality, the phrase refers to a, historically, surprisingly fluid and pluriform scientific issue. It has, in the course of the past five centuries, been used in no less than ten different ways or contexts. A clear taxonomy of these separate problems is useful or relevant in two ways. It certainly helps to disentangle confusions that have inevitably (...) |
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We argue that the mathematization of science should be understood as a normative activity of advocating for a particular methodology with its own criteria for evaluating good research. As a case study, we examine the mathematization of taxonomic classification in systematic biology. We show how mathematization is a normative activity by contrasting its distinctive features in numerical taxonomy in the 1960s with an earlier reform advocated by Ernst Mayr starting in the 1940s. Both Mayr and the numerical taxonomists sought to (...) |
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It is time to escape the constraints of the Systematics Wars narrative and pursue new questions that are better positioned to establish the relevance of the field in this time period to broader issues in the history of biology and history of science. To date, the underlying assumptions of the Systematics Wars narrative have led historians to prioritize theory over practice and the conflicts of a few leading theorists over the less-polarized interactions of systematists at large. We show how shifting (...) |
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Among biological kinds, the most important are species. But species, however defined, have vague boundaries, both synchronically owing to hybridization and ongoing speciation, and diachronically owing to genetic drift and genealogical continuity despite speciation. It is argued that the solution to the problems of species and their vague boundaries is to adopt a thoroughgoing nominalism in regard to all biological taxa, from species to domains. The base entities are individual organisms: populations of these compose species and higher taxa. This accommodates (...) |
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Speciation is a central but elusive issue in evolutionary biology. Over the past sixty years, the subject has been studied within a framework conceived by Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky and subsequently developed further by numerous other workers. In this “isolation” theory, the evolution of reproductive isolation is a key element of speciation; natural selection is given only secondary importance while gene flow is considered prohibitive to the process. In this paper, I argue that certain elements in this approach have (...) |
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Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology. |
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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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Despite many years of discussion, the species problem has still not been adequately resolved. Why is this the case? Here I discuss two recent suggested answers to this question that place the blame on the species problem's empirical aspects or on its philosophical aspects. In contrast, I argue that neither of these two faces of the species problem constitute the principal cause of the species problem's persistence. Rather, they are merely symptoms of the real cause: the species problem has not (...) |
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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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Beginning with our cosmic ancestors and the 1950s ancestors of Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, this essay highlights the wider, post-World War II cultural context, including other science and religion organizations, in which IRAS was formed. It then considers eight challenges from today's context. From the context of science there are the challenge of scale that leads us to question our place in the scheme of things and can lead to a challenge to morale concerning whether we (...) |
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Ernst Mayr’s influence on philosophy of biology has given the field a particular perspective on evolution, phylogeny and life in general. Using debates about the tree of life as a guide, I show how Mayrian evolutionary biology excludes numerous forms of life and many important evolutionary processes. Hybridization and lateral gene transfer are two of these processes, and they occur frequently, with important outcomes in all domains of life. Eukaryotes appear to have a more tree-like history because successful lateral events (...) |
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Biologists and philosophers have offered differing concepts of biological race. That is, they have offered different candidates for what a biological correlate of race might be; for example, races might be subspecies, clades, lineages, ecotypes, or genetic clusters. One thing that is striking about each of these proposals is that they all depend on a concept of population. Indeed, some authors have explicitly characterized races in terms of populations. However, including the concept of population into concepts of race raises three (...) |
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The correspondence between Edgar Anderson and Ernst Mayr leading into their 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the Origin of Species” addressed population thinking, the nature of species, the relationship of microevolution to macroevolution, and the evolutionary dynamics of plants and animals, all central issues in what came to be known as the Evolutionary Synthesis. On some points, they found ready agreement; for others they forged only a short term consensus. They brought two different working styles to this project reflecting (...) |
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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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In introgressive hybridization (the repeated backcrossing of hybrids with parental populations), Edgar Anderson found a source for variation upon which natural selection could work. In his 1953 review article “Introgressive Hybridization,” he asserted that he was “bringing taxonomy to the service of genetics” whereas distinguished colleagues such as Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr did the precise opposite. His work as a geneticist particularly focused on linkage and recombination and was enriched by collaborations with Missouri Botanical Garden colleagues interested in taxonomy (...) |
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In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the (...) |
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Many have argued that unified theories ought to be pursued wherever possible. We deny this on the basis of social-epistemological and decision-theoretic considerations. Consequently, those seeking a more ubiquitous role for unification must either attend to the scientific community’s social structure in greater detail than has been the case, and/or radically revise their conception of unification. |
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This paper surveys questions about the nature of the Modern Synthesis as a historical event : was it rather theoretical than institutional? When and where did it actually happen? Who was involved? It argues that all answers to these questions are interrelated, and that systematic sets of answers define specific perspectives on the Modern Synthesis that are all complementary. |
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There is a growing appreciation of the extent of transcriptome variation across individual cells of the same cell type. While expression variation may be a byproduct of, for example, dynamic or homeostatic processes, here we consider whether single‐cell molecular variation per se might be crucial for population‐level function. Under this hypothesis, molecular variation indicates a diversity of hidden functional capacities within an ensemble of “identical” cells, and this functional diversity facilitates collective behavior that would be inaccessible to a homogenous population. (...) |
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Studying cartoons about the economic crisis and focusing on a pair of scissors as a symbol, I prove how they first turn into unambiguous metaphor for the economic crisis and then experience an evolution in order to adapt to new communication contexts. Along these processes, they undergo more complex changes such as coadaptation and speciation. This has allowed for the scissors meme as a symbol of economic cutbacks to permeate society, and for its metaphorical use to occupy many disparate communication (...) |
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Can we be realists about a general category but pluralists about concepts relating to that category? I argue that paleobiological methods of delineating species are not affected by differing species concepts, and that this underwrites an argument that species concept pluralists should be species category realists. First, the criteria by which paleobiologists delineate species are ‘indifferent’ to the species category. That is, their method for identifying species applies equally to any species concept. To identify a new species, paleobiologists show that (...) |
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I propose we abandon the unit concept of "the evolutionary synthesis". There was much more to evolutionary studies in the 1920s and 1930s than is suggested in our commonplace narratives of this object in history. Instead, four organising threads capture much of evolutionary studies at this time. First, the nature of species and the process of speciation were dominating, unifying subjects. Second, research into these subjects developed along four main lines, or problem complexes: variation, divergence, isolation, and selection. Some calls (...) |
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This paper clarifies the chronology surrounding the population geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky's 1937 book, "Genetics and the Origin of Species." Most historians assume (a) Dobzhansky's book began as a series of 'Jesup lectures,' sponsored by the Department of Zoology at Columbia University in 1936, and (b) before these lectures were given, Dobzhansky knew he would produce a volume for the Columbia Biological Series (CBS). Archival evidence forces a rejection of both assumptions. Dobzhansky's 1936 Columbia lectures were not Jesup lectures. The book (...) |
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Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators and (...) |
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This paper maps the landscape for a range of views concerning the metaphysics of natural kinds. I consider a range of increasingly ontologically committed views concerning natural kinds and the possible arguments for them. I then ask how these relate to natural kind essentialism, arguing that essentialism requires commitment to kinds as entities. I conclude by examining the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds in the light of the general understanding of kinds developed. |
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The species problem is often described as the abundance of conflicting definitions of _species_, such as the biological species concept and phylogenetic species concepts. But biologists understand the notion of species in a non-definitional as well as a definitional way. In this article I argue that when they understand _species_ without a definition in their mind, their understanding is often mediated by the notion of _good species_, or prototypical species, as the idea of ``prototype'' is explicated in cognitive psychology. This (...) |
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In _Realism and Naturalizing Knowledge_ (Keisho Shobo, 2013), Ryo Uehara carefully formulates the homeostatic property cluster theory of natural kinds and expands it by applying this framework to artifacts and knowledge and thereby drawing them in the naturalistic picture of the world. This is a substantial addition to the development of naturalistic philosophy in Japan. In this essay I shall make general comments on his account of natural kinds in the following respects: Uehara's distinction between real and nominal kinds, his (...) |
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The year 2009 has been a year of numerous commemorations of both scientific and non-scientific achievements that contributed to the advancement of human kind. Protestants celebrated the 500th anniversary of the birth of Calvin; literary critics celebrated the 200th anniversary of the poet Edgar Allan Poe; and the musical genius Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was also born 200 years ago. 2009 further marked the bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille; and Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the (...) |
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While Darwin is commonly supposed to have demonstrated the inapplicability of the Aristotelian ontology of species to biological science, recent developments, especially in the wake of the Human Genome Project, have given rise to a new golden age of classification in which ontological ideas -- as for example in the Gene Ontology, the Cell Ontology, the Protein Ontology, and so forth -- are once again playing an important role. In regard to species, on the other hand, matters are more complex. (...) |
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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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This paper isolates a hard, long-standing species problem: developing a comprehensive and exacting theory about the constitutive conditions of the species category, one that is accurate for most of the living world, and which vindicates the widespread view that the species category is of more theoretical import than categories such as genus, sub-species, paradivision, and stirp. The paper then uncovers flaws in several views that imply we have either already solved that hard species problem or dissolved it altogether – so-called (...) |
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