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  1. The nature of selection: evolutionary theory in philosophical focus.Elliott Sober - 1984 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    The Nature of Selection is a straightforward, self-contained introduction to philosophical and biological problems in evolutionary theory. It presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation and clarifies controversial issues concerning altruism, group selection, and the idea that organisms are survival machines built for the good of the genes that inhabit them. "Sober's is the answering philosophical voice, the voice of a first-rate philosopher and a knowledgeable student of contemporary evolutionary theory. His book merits (...)
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  • Why culture is common, but cultural evolution is rare.Rob Boyd - manuscript
    If culture is defined as variation acquired and maintained by social learning, then culture is common in nature. However, cumulative cultural evolution resulting in behaviors that no individual could invent on their own is limited to humans, song birds, and perhaps chimpanzees. Circumstantial evidence suggests that cumulative cultural evolution requires the capacity for observational learning. Here, we analyze two models the evolution of psychological capacities that allow cumulative cultural evolution. Both models suggest that the conditions which allow the evolution of (...)
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  • Genetics and Reductionism.Sahotra Sarkar - 2012 - Cambridge University Press.
    With the advent of the Human Genome Project there have been many claims for the genetic origins of complex human behavior including insanity, criminality, and intelligence. But what does it really mean to call something 'genetic'? This is the fundamental question that Sahotra Sarkar's book addresses. The author analyses the nature of reductionism in classical and molecular genetics. He shows that there are two radically different kinds of reductionist explanation: genetic reduction (as found in classical genetics) and physical reduction (found (...)
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  • Solving the puzzle of human cooperation.Peter Richerson - manuscript
    Is society an organic whole with each of its many components working together like the organs in a body? Like organisms, societies are composed of many parts which seem to work together enhance their survival. Different people fulfill different, necessary role—subsistence, reproduction, coordination, and defense. Regular exchange of matter and energy guarantees that each component has the resources it needs. Norms, laws and customs regulate virtually every aspect of social interaction, who may marry who, how disputes are resolved, and how (...)
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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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  • The Selfish Gene. [REVIEW]Gunther S. Stent & Richard Dawkins - 1977 - Hastings Center Report 7 (6):33.
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  • Does culture evolve?Joseph Fracchia & R. C. Lewontin - 1999 - History and Theory 38 (4):52–78.
    The drive to describe cultural history as an evolutionary process has two sources. One from within social theory is part of the impetus to convert social studies into "social sciences" providing them with the status accorded to the natural sciences. The other comes from within biology and biological anthropology in the belief that the theory of evolution must be universal in its application to all functions of all living organisms. The social scientific theory of cultural evolution is pre-Darwinian, employing a (...)
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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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  • A Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action.David Morris, E. Thelen & L. B. Smith - 1997 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 11 (2).
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  • Symbiosis, evolvability and modularity.Kim Sterelny - manuscript
    This paper explores the connections between inheritance systems, evolvability and modularity. I argue that the transmission of symbiotic micro-organisms is an inheritance system, and one that is evolutionarily significant because symbionts generate biologically crucial aspects of their hosts’ organisation through modular developmental pathways. More specifically, I develop and defend five theses.
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  • Philosophy of Biology.Sergio Sismondo - 1995 - Philosophical Review 104 (1):164.
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  • Culture in whales and dolphins.Luke Rendell & Hal Whitehead - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):309-324.
    Studies of animal culture have not normally included a consideration of cetaceans. However, with several long-term field studies now maturing, this situation should change. Animal culture is generally studied by either investigating transmission mechanisms experimentally, or observing patterns of behavioural variation in wild populations that cannot be explained by either genetic or environmental factors. Taking this second, ethnographic, approach, there is good evidence for cultural transmission in several cetacean species. However, only the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops) has been shown experimentally to (...)
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  • Memes: Universal acid or a better mouse trap?Peter Richerson - manuscript
    Among the many vivid metaphors in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, one stands out. The understanding of how cumulative natural selection gives rise to adaptations is, Dennett says, like a “universal acid”—an idea so powerful and corrosive of conventional wisdom that it dissolves all attempts to contain it within biology. Like most good ideas, this one is very simple: Once replicators (material objects that are faithfully copied) come to exist, some will replicate more rapidly than others, leading to adaptation by natural selection. (...)
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  • Memes: Universal acid or a better mouse trap?Rob Boyd - manuscript
    Among the many vivid metaphors in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, one stands out. The understanding of how cumulative natural selection gives rise to adaptations is, Dennett says, like a “universal acid”—an idea so powerful and corrosive of conventional wisdom that it dissolves all attempts to contain it within biology. Like most good ideas, this one is very simple: Once replicators (material objects that are faithfully copied) come to exist, some will replicate more rapidly than others, leading to adaptation by natural selection. (...)
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  • The "genetic program" program: A commentary on Maynard Smith on information in biology.Kim Sterelny - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (2):195-201.
    In many texts on evolution the reader will find a characteristic depiction of inheritance and evolution, one showing the generations of an evolving population linked only by a causal flow from genotype to genotype. On this view, the genotype of each organism in this population plays a dual role as both the motor of individual development and as the sole causal channel across the generations. This picture is known to be literally false. In many species, parents exert direct causal influence (...)
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  • Genetic information: A metaphor in search of a theory.Paul Edmund Griffiths - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (3):394-412.
    John Maynard Smith has defended against philosophical criticism the view that developmental biology is the study of the expression of information encoded in the genes by natural selection. However, like other naturalistic concepts of information, this ‘teleosemantic’ information applies to many non-genetic factors in development. Maynard Smith also fails to show that developmental biology is concerned with teleosemantic information. Some other ways to support Maynard Smith’s conclusion are considered. It is argued that on any definition of information the view that (...)
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  • Genes, Peoples, and Languages.Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza - 2000 - Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
    Cavalli-Sforza was among the first to ask whether the genes of modern populations contain a historical record of the human species. In answering to the affirmative, this title comprises five lectures that serve as a summation of the author's work in tracking a hundred thousand years of human evolution. Maps.
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  • (1 other version)The Descent of Man.Charles Darwin - 1948 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 4 (2):216-216.
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  • Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation.P. E. Griffiths & R. D. Gray - 1994 - Journal of Philosophy 91 (6):277-304.
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  • Darwinism and Developmental Systems.Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray - 2001 - In Susan Oyama, Paul Griffiths & Russell D. Gray (eds.), Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. MIT Press. pp. 195-218.
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  • Reply to Alexander Rosenberg's Review of The Nature of Selection.Elliott Sober - 1986 - Behaviorism 14 (1):77-88.
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  • (2 other versions)The variation of animals and plants under domestication.Charles Darwin - 1868 - Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. Edited by Harriet Ritvo.
    The publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 ignited a public storm he neither wanted nor enjoyed. Having offered his book as a contribution to science, Darwin discovered to his dismay that it was received as an affront by many scientists and as a sacrilege by clergy and Christian citizens. To answer the criticism that his theory was a theory only, and a wild one at that, he published two volumes in 1868 to demonstrate that evolution was (...)
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  • Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee & Marcus W. Feldman - 2000 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (1):131-146.
    We propose a conceptual model that maps the causal pathways relating biological evolution to cultural change. It builds on conventional evolutionary theory by placing emphasis on the capacity of organisms to modify sources of natural selection in their environment (niche construction) and by broadening the evolutionary dynamic to incorporate ontogenetic and cultural processes. In this model, phenotypes have a much more active role in evolution than generally conceived. This sheds light on hominid evolution, on the evolution of culture, and on (...)
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  • Burying the vehicle.Richard Dawkins - 1994 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17 (4):616-617.
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  • Replicator II – judgement day.Paul E. Griffiths & Russell D. Gray - 1997 - Biology and Philosophy 12 (4):471-492.
    The Developmental Systems approach to evolution is defended against the alternative extended replicator approach of Sterelny, Smith and Dickison (1996). A precise definition is provided of the spatial and temporal boundaries of the life-cycle that DST claims is the unit of evolution. Pacé Sterelny et al., the extended replicator theory is not a bulwark against excessive holism. Everything which DST claims is replicated in evolution can be shown to be an extended replicator on Sterelny et al.s definition. Reasons are given (...)
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  • (1 other version)The concept of information in biology.John Maynard Smith - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (2):177-194.
    The use of informational terms is widespread in molecular and developmental biology. The usage dates back to Weismann. In both protein synthesis and in later development, genes are symbols, in that there is no necessary connection between their form (sequence) and their effects. The sequence of a gene has been determined, by past natural selection, because of the effects it produces. In biology, the use of informational terms implies intentionality, in that both the form of the signal, and the response (...)
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  • The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus.Elliott Sober - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (3):397-399.
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  • Genetics and Reductionism.Sahotra Sarkar - 2000 - Philosophical Quarterly 50 (198):128-130.
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  • The Major Transitions in Evolution.John Maynard Smith & Eörs Szathmáry - 1996 - Journal of the History of Biology 29 (1):151-152.
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  • Learning, evolution, and the icing on the cake.Matteo Mameli - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (1):141-153.
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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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  • Postscript on the Baldwin Effect and Niche Construction.Peter Godfrey-Smith, Daniel Dennett & Terrence W. Deacon - 2003 - In Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. MIT Press. pp. 107.
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  • (1 other version)Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.David L. Hull - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):435-438.
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  • The Evolution of Culture.Daniel C. Dennett - 2001 - The Monist 84 (3):1-26.
    Cultures evolve. In one sense, this is a truism; in other senses, it asserts one or another controversial, speculative, unconfirmed theory of culture. Consider a cultural inventory of some culture at some time—say A.D. 1900. It should include all the languages, practices, ceremonies, edifices, methods, tools, myths, music, art, and so forth, that compose that culture. Over time, that inventory changes. Today, a hundred years later, some items will have disappeared, some multiplied, some merged, some changed, and many new elements (...)
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  • Climbing Mount Improbable.Richard Dawkins - 1999 - Environmental Values 8 (1):114-116.
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  • The Evolution of an Evolutionist.C. H. Waddington - 1977 - Journal of the History of Biology 10 (2):369-370.
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  • (1 other version)Philosophy of Biology.Elliott Sober & Pénel Jean-Dominique - 1995 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 185 (3):382-383.
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  • Critical Commentary on Unto Others.David Sloan Wilson & Elliott Sober - 2002 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3):697-701.
    Altruism has both an evolutionary and a psychological meaning. As the term is used in evolutionary theory, a trait is deemed altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the actor and enhances the fitness of someone else. In its psychological sense, the thesis that we have altruistic ultimate motives asserts that we care about the welfare of others, not just as a means of enhancing our own well-being, but as an end in itself. In Unto Others (hereafter UO), we consider (...)
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