Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Of stirps and chromosomes: Generality through detail.Charles H. Pence - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C):177-190.
    One claim found in the received historiography of the biometrical school (comprised primarily of Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and W. F. R. Weldon) is that one of the biometricians' great flaws was their inability to look past their population-focused, statistical, gradualist understanding of evolutionary change – which led, in part, to their ignoring developments in cellular biology around 1900. I will argue, on the contrary, that the work of the biometricians was, from its earliest days, fundamentally concerned with connections between (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Whatever Happened to Reversion?Charles H. Pence - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92 (C):97-108.
    The idea of ‘reversion’ or ‘atavism’ has a peculiar history. For many authors in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – including Darwin, Galton, Pearson, Weismann, and Spencer, among others – reversion was one of the central phenomena which a theory of heredity ought to explain. By only a few decades later, however, Fisher and others could look back upon reversion as a historical curiosity, a non-problem, or even an impediment to clear theorizing. I explore various reasons that reversion might have (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • W.F.R. Weldon changes his mind.Charles H. Pence - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-20.
    A recent debate over the causal foundations of evolutionary theory pits those who believe that natural selection causally explains long-term, adaptive population change against those who do not. In this paper, I argue that this debate – far from being an invention of several articles in 2002 – dates from our very first engagements with evolution as a quantified, statistical science. Further, when we analyze that history, we see that a pivotal figure in the early use of statistical methodology in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Models, Unification, and Simulations: Margaret C. Morrison (1954–2021).Brigitte Falkenburg & Stephan Hartmann - 2021 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 52 (1):25-33.
    The philosophy of science community mourns the loss of Margaret Catherine Morrison, who passed away on January 9, 2021, after a long battle with cancer. Margie, as she was known to all who knew her, was highly regarded for her influential contributions to the philosophy of science, particularly her studies of the role of models and simulations in the natural and social sciences. These contributions made her a world-leading philosopher of science, instrumental in shifting philosophers' attention from the structure of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The origins of the stochastic theory of population genetics: The Wright-Fisher model.Yoichi Ishida & Alirio Rosales - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 79 (C):101226.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • A Defense of Low-Probability Scientific Explanations.Hayley Clatterbuck - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (1):91-112.
    I evaluate the plausibility of explanatory elitism, the view that a good scientific explanation of an outcome will show that it was highly probable. I consider an argument from Michael Strevens that elitism is the only view that can account for the historical acceptance of probabilistic theories in physics. I argue that biology provides better test cases for evaluating elitism and conclude that theories in that domain were favored in virtue of conferring correct, and not necessarily high, probabilities on outcomes.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The economy of nature: the structure of evolution in Linnaeus, Darwin, and the modern synthesis.Charles H. Pence & Daniel G. Swaim - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):435-454.
    We argue that the economy of nature constitutes an invocation of structure in the biological sciences, one largely missed by philosophers of biology despite the turn in recent years toward structural explanations throughout the philosophy of science. We trace a portion of the history of this concept, beginning with the theologically and economically grounded work of Linnaeus, moving through Darwin’s adaptation of the economy of nature and its reconstitution in genetic terms during the first decades of the Modern Synthesis. What (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Four Pillars of Statisticalism.Denis M. Walsh, André Ariew & Mohan Matthen - 2017 - Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 9 (1):1-18.
    Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • “Population” in biology and statistics.Nicola Bertoldi & Charles H. Pence - 2025 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 109 (C):1-11.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Early History of Chance in Evolution.Charles H. Pence - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 50:48-58.
    Work throughout the history and philosophy of biology frequently employs ‘chance’, ‘unpredictability’, ‘probability’, and many similar terms. One common way of understanding how these concepts were introduced in evolution focuses on two central issues: the first use of statistical methods in evolution (Galton), and the first use of the concept of “objective chance” in evolution (Wright). I argue that while this approach has merit, it fails to fully capture interesting philosophical reflections on the role of chance expounded by two of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • The mind, the lab, and the field: Three kinds of populations in scientific practice.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther, Ryan Giordano, Michael D. Edge & Rasmus Nielsen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52:12-21.
    Scientists use models to understand the natural world, and it is important not to conflate model and nature. As an illustration, we distinguish three different kinds of populations in studies of ecology and evolution: theoretical, laboratory, and natural populations, exemplified by the work of R.A. Fisher, Thomas Park, and David Lack, respectively. Biologists are rightly concerned with all three types of populations. We examine the interplay between these different kinds of populations, and their pertinent models, in three examples: the notion (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Scientific fictions as rules of inference.Mauricio Suárez - 2008 - In Mauricio Suárez (ed.), Fictions in Science: Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization. New York: Routledge. pp. 158--178.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • ‘‘Describing our whole experience’’: The statistical philosophies of W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson.Charles H. Pence - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (4):475-485.
    There are two motivations commonly ascribed to historical actors for taking up statistics: to reduce complicated data to a mean value (e.g., Quetelet), and to take account of diversity (e.g., Galton). Different motivations will, it is assumed, lead to different methodological decisions in the practice of the statistical sciences. Karl Pearson and W. F. R. Weldon are generally seen as following directly in Galton’s footsteps. I argue for two related theses in light of this standard interpretation, based on a reading (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Evidentiary inference in evolutionary biology: Review of Elliott Sober’s Evidence and evolution: the logic behind the science. Cambridge University Press, New York.James Justus - 2011 - Biology and Philosophy 26 (3):419-437.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Prediction in selectionist evolutionary theory.Rasmus Gr⊘Nfeldt Winther - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):889-901.
    Selectionist evolutionary theory has often been faulted for not making novel predictions that are surprising, risky, and correct. I argue that it in fact exhibits the theoretical virtue of predictive capacity in addition to two other virtues: explanatory unification and model fitting. Two case studies show the predictive capacity of selectionist evolutionary theory: parallel evolutionary change in E. coli, and the origin of eukaryotic cells through endosymbiosis.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Model transfer and conceptual progress: tales from chemistry and biology.Justin Price - 2019 - Foundations of Chemistry 22 (1):43-57.
    The dissemination of models across disciplinary lines has become a phenomenon of interest to philosophers of science. To account for this phenomenon, philosophers have invented two units of analysis. The first identifies to the thing that transfers, model templates. The second identifies the thing to which transferable templates apply, landing zones. There exists a dynamic between the thing that is transferred and the thing to which transferrable templates apply. The use of a transferable template in a new domain requires reconception (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Emancipation Through Interaction – How Eugenics and Statistics Converged and Diverged.Francisco Louçã - 2009 - Journal of the History of Biology 42 (4):649-684.
    The paper discusses the scope and influence of eugenics in defining the scientific programme of statistics and the impact of the evolution of biology on social scientists. It argues that eugenics was instrumental in providing a bridge between sciences, and therefore created both the impulse and the institutions necessary for the birth of modern statistics in its applications first to biology and then to the social sciences. Looking at the question from the point of view of the history of statistics (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The resisted rise of randomisation in experimental design: British agricultural science, c.1910–1930.Dominic Berry - 2015 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37 (3):242-260.
    The most conspicuous form of agricultural experiment is the field trial, and within the history of such trials, the arrival of the randomised control trial is considered revolutionary. Originating with R.A. Fisher within British agricultural science in the 1920s and 30s, the RCT has since become one of the most prodigiously used experimental techniques throughout the natural and social sciences. Philosophers of science have already scrutinised the epistemological uniqueness of RCTs, undermining their status as the ‘gold standard’ in experimental design. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • (1 other version)Models and Statistical Inference: The Controversy between Fisher and Neyman–Pearson.Lenhard Johannes - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1):69-91.
    The main thesis of the paper is that in the case of modern statistics, the differences between the various concepts of models were the key to its formative controversies. The mathematical theory of statistical inference was mainly developed by Ronald A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon S. Pearson. Fisher on the one side and Neyman–Pearson on the other were involved often in a polemic controversy. The common view is that Neyman and Pearson made Fisher's account more stringent mathematically. It is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • (1 other version)Models and statistical inference: The controversy between Fisher and neyman–pearson.Johannes Lenhard - 2006 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (1):69-91.
    The main thesis of the paper is that in the case of modern statistics, the differences between the various concepts of models were the key to its formative controversies. The mathematical theory of statistical inference was mainly developed by Ronald A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon S. Pearson. Fisher on the one side and Neyman–Pearson on the other were involved often in a polemic controversy. The common view is that Neyman and Pearson made Fisher's account more stringent mathematically. It is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • John Maynard Smith and the natural philosophy of␣adaptation.Alirio Rosales - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (5):1027-1040.
    One of the most remarkable aspects of John Maynard Smith’s work was the fact that he devoted time both to doing science and to reflecting philosophically upon its methods and concepts. In this paper I offer a philosophical analysis of Maynard Smith’s approach to modelling phenotypic evolution in relation to three main themes. The first concerns the type of scientific understanding that ESS and optimality models give us. The second concerns the causal–historical aspect of stability analyses of adaptation. The third (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The "Evolutionary Synthesis" of George Udny Yule.James G. Tabery - 2003 - Journal of the History of Biology 37 (1):73-101.
    This article discusses the work of George Udny Yule in relation to the evolutionary synthesis and the biometric-Mendelian debate. It has generally been claimed that (i.) in 1902, Yule put forth the first account showing that the competing biometric and Mendelian programs could be synthesized. Furthermore, (ii.) the scientific figures who should have been most interested in this thesis (the biometricians W. F. Raphael Weldon and Karl Pearson, and the Mendelian William Bateson) were too blinded by personal animosity towards each (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • On Probabilities in Biology and Physics.Joseph Berkovitz & Philippe Huneman - 2015 - Erkenntnis 80 (S3):433-456.
    This volume focuses on various questions concerning the interpretation of probability and probabilistic reasoning in biology and physics. It is inspired by the idea that philosophers of biology and philosophers of physics who work on the foundations of their disciplines encounter similar questions and problems concerning the role and application of probability, and that interaction between the two communities will be both interesting and fruitful. In this introduction we present the background to the main questions that the volume focuses on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (2 other versions)What was Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection and what was it for?Anya Plutynski - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (1):59-82.
    Fisher’s ‘fundamental theorem of natural selection’ is notoriously abstract, and, no less notoriously, many take it to be false. In this paper, I explicate the theorem, examine the role that it played in Fisher’s general project for biology, and analyze why it was so very fundamental for Fisher. I defend Ewens (1989) and Lessard (1997) in the view that the theorem is in fact a true theorem if, as Fisher claimed, ‘the terms employed’ are ‘used strictly as defined’ (1930, p. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • “Batesonian Mendelism” and “Pearsonian biometry”: shedding new light on the controversy between William Bateson and Karl Pearson.Nicola Bertoldi - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (4):1-44.
    This paper contributes to the ongoing reassessment of the controversy between William Bateson and Karl Pearson by characterising what we call “Batesonian Mendelism” and “Pearsonian biometry” as coherent and competing scientific outlooks. Contrary to the thesis that such a controversy stemmed from diverging theoretical commitments on the nature of heredity and evolution, we argue that Pearson’s and Bateson’s alternative views on those processes ultimately relied on different appraisals of the methodological value of the statistical apparatus developed by Francis Galton. Accordingly, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Scientific understanding and mathematical abstraction.Margaret Catherine Morrison - 2006 - Philosophia 34 (3):337-353.
    This paper argues for two related theses. The first is that mathematical abstraction can play an important role in shaping the way we think about and hence understand certain phenomena, an enterprise that extends well beyond simply representing those phenomena for the purpose of calculating/predicting their behaviour. The second is that much of our contemporary understanding and interpretation of natural selection has resulted from the way it has been described in the context of statistics and mathematics. I argue for these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Autonomous-Statistical Explanations and Natural Selection.André Ariew, Collin Rice & Yasha Rohwer - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (3):635-658.
    Shapiro and Sober claim that Walsh, Ariew, Lewens, and Matthen give a mistaken, a priori defense of natural selection and drift as epiphenomenal. Contrary to Shapiro and Sober’s claims, we first argue that WALM’s explanatory doctrine does not require a defense of epiphenomenalism. We then defend WALM’s explanatory doctrine by arguing that the explanations provided by the modern genetical theory of natural selection are ‘autonomous-statistical explanations’ analogous to Galton’s explanation of reversion to mediocrity and an explanation of the diffusion ofgases. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   28 citations  
  • Theories that narrate the world: Ronald A. Fisher's mass selection and Sewall Wright's shifting balance.Alirio Rosales - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 62:22-30.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • (2 other versions)What was Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection and what was it for?Anya Plutynski - 2004 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (1):59-82.
    Fisher’s ‘fundamental theorem of natural selection’ is notoriously abstract, and, no less notoriously, many take it to be false. In this paper, I explicate the theorem, examine the role that it played in Fisher’s general project for biology, and analyze why it was so very fundamental for Fisher. I defend Ewens and Lessard in the view that the theorem is in fact a true theorem if, as Fisher claimed, ‘the terms employed’ are ‘used strictly as defined’. Finally, I explain the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2002.Stephen P. Weldon - 2002 - Isis 93:1-237.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Descriptions and models: Some responses to Abrams.Denis M. Walsh - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3):302-308.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • (2 other versions)What was Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection and what was it for?Anya Plutynski - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (1):59-82.
    Fisher’s ‘fundamental theorem of natural selection’ is notoriously abstract, and, no less notoriously, many take it to be false. In this paper, I explicate the theorem, examine the role that it played in Fisher’s general project for biology, and analyze why it was so very fundamental for Fisher. I defend Ewens and Lessard in the view that the theorem is in fact a true theorem if, as Fisher claimed, ‘the terms employed’ are ‘used strictly as defined’. Finally, I explain the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations