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  1. Philosophy of Biology.Elliott Sober - 1993 - Boulder, Colo.: Routledge.
    Perhaps because of it implications for our understanding of human nature, recent philosophy of biology has seen what might be the most dramatic work in the philosophies of the ?special? sciences. This drama has centered on evolutionary theory, and in the second edition of this textbook, Elliott Sober introduces the reader to the most important issues of these developments. With a rare combination of technical sophistication and clarity of expression, Sober engages both the higher level of theory and the direct (...)
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  • Toward a New Philosophy of Biology.Ernst Mayr - 1990 - Journal of the History of Biology 23 (2):321-328.
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  • The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance.Ernst Mayr - 1982 - Harvard University Press.
    Explores the development of the ideas of evolutionary biology, particularly as affected by the increasing understanding of genetics and of the chemical basis of inheritance.
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  • The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History.Marjorie Grene & David Depew - 2004 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by David J. Depew.
    Is life different from the non-living? If so, how? And how, in that case, does biology as the study of living things differ from other sciences? These questions are traced through an exploration of episodes in the history of biology and philosophy. The book begins with Aristotle, then moves on to Descartes, comparing his position with that of Harvey. In the eighteenth century the authors consider Buffon and Kant. In the nineteenth century the authors examine the Cuvier-Geoffroy debate, pre-Darwinian geology (...)
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  • The proximate–ultimate distinction and evolutionary developmental biology: causal irrelevance versus explanatory abstraction.Massimo Pigliucci & Raphael Scholl - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (5):653-670.
    Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction has received renewed interest in recent years. Here we discuss its role in arguments about the relevance of developmental to evolutionary biology. We show that two recent critiques of the proximate–ultimate distinction fail to explain why developmental processes in particular should be of interest to evolutionary biologists. We trace these failures to a common problem: both critiques take the proximate–ultimate distinction to neglect specific causal interactions in nature. We argue that this is implausible, and that the distinction (...)
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  • The Organism as the Subject and Object of Evolution.Richard C. Lewontin - 1983 - Scientia 77 (18):65.
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  • Types of causal explanation in science.Ernest Nagel - 1965 - In Daniel Lerner (ed.), Cause and effect. New York,: Free Press. pp. 25.
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  • More on how and why: a response to commentaries.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, William Hoppitt & Tobias Uller - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):793-810.
    We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term ‘ultimate causation’ and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic (...)
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  • Reciprocal causation and the proximate–ultimate distinction.T. E. Dickins & R. A. Barton - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):747-756.
    Laland and colleagues have sought to challenge the proximate–ultimate distinction claiming that it imposes a unidirectional model of causation, is limited in its capacity to account for complex biological phenomena, and hinders progress in biology. In this article the core of their argument is critically analyzed. It is claimed that contrary to their claims Laland et al. rely upon the proximate–ultimate distinction to make their points and that their alternative conception of reciprocal causation refers to phenomena that were already accounted (...)
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  • Causal mechanisms of evolution and the capacity for niche construction.Ward B. Watt - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):757-766.
    Ernst Mayr proposed a distinction between “proximate”, mechanistic, and “ultimate”, evolutionary, causes of biological phenomena. This dichotomy has influenced the thinking of many biologists, but it is increasingly perceived as impeding modern studies of evolutionary processes, including study of “niche construction” in which organisms alter their environments in ways supportive of their evolutionary success. Some still find value for this dichotomy in its separation of answers to “how?” versus “why?”questions about evolution. But “why is A?” questions about evolution necessarily take (...)
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  • It is possible to reduce biological explanations to explanations in chemistry and/or physics.Evelyn Fox Keller - 2009 - In Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 19–31.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Systems Biology Function: A Minimalist Conception Kant and As‐If Purpose Cybernetics and Bernard Machines A Guarded Optimism Postscript: Counterpoint References.
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  • Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology.Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.) - 2009 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    This collection of specially commissioned essays puts top scholars head to head to debate the central issues in the lively and fast growing field of philosophy ...
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  • Aspects of scientific explanation.Carl G. Hempel - 1965 - In Carl Gustav Hempel (ed.), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: The Free Press. pp. 504.
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  • (1 other version)Causality and explanation.Wesley C. Salmon - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a section (...)
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  • (5 other versions)The origin of species by means of natural selection, or, The preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.Charles Darwin - 1963 - New York: Modern Library. Edited by Paul Landacre & Douglas A. Dunstan.
    Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific imagination, The Origin of Species sold out on the day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England, and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Yet, after reading it, Darwin's friend and colleague T. H. Huxley had a different reaction: (...)
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  • Causes, proximate and ultimate.Richard C. Francis - 1990 - Biology and Philosophy 5 (4):401-415.
    Within evolutionary biology a distinction is frequently made between proximate and ultimate causes. One apparently plausible interpretation of this dichotomy is that proximate causes concern processes occurring during the life of an organism while ultimate causes refer to those processes (particularly natural selection) that shaped its genome. But ultimate causes are not sought through historical investigations of an organisms lineage. Rather, explanations referring to ultimate causes typically emerge from functional analyses. But these functional analyses do not identify causes of any (...)
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  • The proximate/ultimate distinction in the multiple careers of Ernst Mayr.John Beatty - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (3):333-356.
    Ernst Mayr''s distinction between ultimate and proximate causes is justly considered a major contribution to philosophy of biology. But how did Mayr come to this philosophical distinction, and what role did it play in his earlier scientific work? I address these issues by dividing Mayr''s work into three careers or phases: 1) Mayr the naturalist/researcher, 2) Mayr the representative of and spokesman for evolutionary biology and systematics, and more recently 3) Mayr the historian and philosopher of biology. If we want (...)
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  • Ernst Mayr's 'ultimate/proximate' distinction reconsidered and reconstructed.André Ariew - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (4):553-565.
    It's been 41 years since the publication of Ernst Mayr's Cause and Effect in Biology wherein Mayr most clearly develops his version of the influential distinction between ultimate and proximate causes in biology. In critically assessing Mayr's essay I uncover false statements and red-herrings about biological explanation. Nevertheless, I argue to uphold an analogue of the ultimate/proximate distinction as it refers to two different kinds of explanations, one dynamical the other statistical.
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  • (1 other version)Studies in the logic of explanation.Carl Gustav Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135-175.
    To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question “why?” rather than only the question “what?”, is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function (...)
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  • (4 other versions)The Logic of Scientific Discovery.Karl Popper - 1959 - Studia Logica 9:262-265.
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  • (1 other version)Studies in the Logic of Explanation.Carl Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 14 (2):133-133.
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  • What Evolution Is.Ernst Mayr - 2001 - Phoenix.
    Provides a thorough overview of historical and contemporary theories of evolution, discusses key concepts and terms, and argues that our understanding of evolution has changed the beliefs and values of modern humankind. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.
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  • (4 other versions)The Logic of Scientific Discovery.K. Popper - 1959 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 (37):55-57.
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  • The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. [REVIEW]Ernst Mayr - 1985 - Journal of the History of Biology 18 (1):145-153.
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  • Philosophy of Biology Today: On the Outside of Europe Looking In.Michael Ruse - 1988 - State University of New York Press.
    This short and highly accessible volume opens up the subject of the philosophy of biology to professionals and to students in both disciplines. The text covers briefly and clearly all of the pertinent topics in the subject, dealing with both human and non-human issues, and quite uniquely surveying not only scholars in the English-speaking world but others elsewhere, including the Eastern block. As molecular biologists peer ever more deeply into life’s mysteries, there are those who fear that such ‘reductionism’ conceals (...)
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  • Teleological and teleonomic, a new analysis.Ernst Mayr - 1974 - In R. S. Cohen & Marx W. Wartofsky (eds.), Methodological and historical essays in the natural and social sciences. Boston,: Reidel. pp. 91--117.
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  • (1 other version)The philosophy of biology.David L. Hull & Michael Ruse (eds.) - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).
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  • (1 other version)The autonomy of biology.Ernst Mayr - 2004 - Ludus Vitalis: Revista de Filosofía de Las Ciencias de la Vida, México 12 (21):15-28.
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  • Why how and why aren’t enough: more problems with Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction.Brett Calcott - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):767-780.
    Like Laland et al., I think Mayr’s distinction is problematic, but I identify a further problem with it. I argue that Mayr’s distinction is a false dichotomy, and obscures an important question about evolutionary change. I show how this question, once revealed, sheds light on some debates in evo-devo that Laland et al.’s analysis cannot, and suggest that it provides a different view about how future integration between biological disciplines might proceed.
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  • Philosophy of Biology.Peter Godfrey-Smith - 2013 - Princeton: Princeton University Press.
    An essential introduction to the philosophy of biology This is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible introduction to the philosophy of biology written by a leading authority on the subject. Geared to philosophers, biologists, and students of both, the book provides sophisticated and innovative coverage of the central topics and many of the latest developments in the field. Emphasizing connections between biological theories and other areas of philosophy, and carefully explaining both philosophical and biological terms, Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses the relation between (...)
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  • Philosophy of biological science.David L. Hull - 1974 - Englewood Cliffs, N.J.,: Prentice-Hall.
    Compares classic and contemporary theories of genetics and evolution and explores the role of teleological thought in biology.
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  • (5 other versions)The origin of species.Charles Darwin - 1859 - New York: Norton. Edited by Philip Appleman.
    In The Origin of Species (1859) Darwin challenged many of the most deeply-held beliefs of the Western world. Arguing for a material, not divine, origin of species, he showed that new species are achieved by "natural selection." The Origin communicates the enthusiasm of original thinking in an open, descriptive style, and Darwin's emphasis on the value of diversity speaks more strongly now than ever. As well as a stimulating introduction and detailed notes, this edition offers a register of the many (...)
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  • More on how and why: cause and effect in biology revisited.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, William Hoppitt & Tobias Uller - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):719-745.
    In 1961, Ernst Mayr published a highly influential article on the nature of causation in biology, in which he distinguished between proximate and ultimate causes. Mayr argued that proximate causes (e.g. physiological factors) and ultimate causes (e.g. natural selection) addressed distinct ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and were not competing alternatives. That distinction retains explanatory value today. However, the adoption of Mayr’s heuristic led to the widespread belief that ontogenetic processes are irrelevant to evolutionary questions, a belief that has (1) hindered (...)
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  • It is not possible to reduce biological explanations to explanations in chemistry and/or physics.John Dupré - 2009 - In Francisco José Ayala & Robert Arp (eds.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of biology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 32–47.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: No Need for Special Biological Laws? The Reductionist Principle Strong Emergence Complex Relations in Biology A Misinformed Slogan and Its Contributions Genes Causation Systems Biology Metaphysical Coda Postscript: Counterpoint Acknowledgments Notes References.
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  • The nature of explanation.Peter Achinstein - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Offering a new approach to scientific explanation, this book focuses initially on the explaining act itself.
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  • Multiple explanations in Darwinian evolutionary theory.Walter J. Bock - 2009 - Acta Biotheoretica 58 (1):65-79.
    Variational evolutionary theory as advocated by Darwin is not a single theory, but a bundle of related but independent theories, namely: (a) variational evolution; (b) gradualism rather than large leaps; (c) processes of phyletic evolution and of speciation; (d) causes for the formation of varying individuals in populations and for the action of selective agents; and (e) all organisms evolved from a common ancestor. The first four are nomological-deductive explanations and the fifth is historical-narrative. Therefore evolutionary theory must be divided (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1986 - Journal of the History of Biology 19 (1):161-162.
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  • (1 other version)The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation.Ernest Nagel - 1962 - Philosophy 37 (142):372-374.
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  • (1 other version)The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (1):119-121.
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  • The Structure of Biological Science.Alexander Rosenberg - 1985 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument explores differences between autonomist and anti-autonomist (...)
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  • What makes biology unique?: considerations on the autonomy of a scientific discipline.Ernst Mayr - 2004 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This collection of revised and new essays argues that biology is an autonomous science rather than a branch of the physical sciences. Ernst Mayr, widely considered the most eminent evolutionary biologist of the 20th century, offers insights on the history of evolutionary thought, critiques the conditions of philosophy to the science of biology, and comments on several of the major developments in evolutionary theory. Notably, Mayr explains that Darwin's theory of evolution is actually five separate theories, each with its own (...)
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  • Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science.David L. Hull - 2002 - Journal of the History of Biology 35 (2):414-415.
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  • Science and Selection: Essays on Biological Evolution and the Philosophy of Science.David L. Hull - 2000 - Cambridge University Press.
    One way to understand science is as a selection process. David Hull, one of the dominant figures in contemporary philosophy of science, sets out in this 2001 volume a general analysis of this selection process that applies equally to biological evolution, the reaction of the immune system to antigens, operant learning, and social and conceptual change in science. Hull aims to distinguish between those characteristics that are contingent features of selection and those that are essential. Science and Selection brings together (...)
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  • Proximate and ultimate causes: how come? and what for? [REVIEW]David Haig - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):781-786.
    Proximate and ultimate causes in evolutionary biology have come to conflate two distinctions. The first is a distinction between immediate and historical causes. The second is between explanations of mechanism and adaptive function. Mayr emphasized the first distinction but many evolutionary biologists use proximate and ultimate causes to refer to the second. I recommend that ‘ultimate cause’ be abandoned as ambiguous.
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  • Philosophies of the Sciences: A Guide.Fritz Allhoff (ed.) - 2009 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    The essays are written by leading scholars in a highly accessible style for the student audience Presents and discusses central debates in the field, making it ...
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  • Philosophy of Biology.Brian Garvey - 2006 - Stocksfield: Mcgill-Queen's University Press.
    This major new series in the philosophy of science aims to provide a new generation of textbooks for the subject. The series will not only offer fresh treatments of core topics in the theory and methodology of scientific knowledge, but also introductions to newer areas of the discipline. Furthermore, the series will cover topics in current science that raise significant foundational issues both for scientific theory and for philosophy more generally. Biology raises distinct questions of its own not only for (...)
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  • (1 other version)Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction.Alexander Rosenberg & Daniel W. McShea - 2007 - New York, NY: Routledge. Edited by Daniel W. McShea.
    Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to contemporary thinking about (...)
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  • Ultimate explanations concern the adaptive rationale for organism design.Andy Gardner - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):787-791.
    My understanding is that proximate explanations concern adaptive mechanism and that ultimate explanations concern adaptive rationale. Viewed in this light, the two kinds of explanation are quite distinct, but they interact in a complementary way to give a full understanding of biological adaptations. In contrast, Laland et al. (2013)—following a literal reading of Mayr (Science 134:1501–1506, 1961)—have characterized ultimate explanations as concerning any and all mechanisms that have operated over the course of an organism’s evolutionary history. This has unfortunate consequences, (...)
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  • Proximate and ultimate causations.Ernst Mayr - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (1):93-94.
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  • (1 other version)The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation.Ernest Nagel - 1981 - Science and Society 45 (4):475-480.
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