Philosophy of Science Commons^™

Darwinian Controversies: An Historiographical Recounting, David Depew

David J Depew

This essay reviews key controversies in the history of the Darwinian research tradition: the Wilberforce-Huxley debate in 1860, early twentieth-century debates about the heritability of acquired characteristics and the consistency of Mendelian genetics with natural selection; the 1925 Scopes trial about teaching evolution; tensions about race, culture, and eugenics at the 1959 centenary celebration Darwin’s Origin of Species; adaptationism and its critics in the Sociobiology debate of 1970s and, more recently, Evolutionary Psychology; and current disputes about Intelligent Design. These controversies, I argue, are etched into public memory because they occur at the emotionally charged boundaries between public-political, technical-scientific, and …

Darwinism, Design And Complex Systems Dynamics, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Evolution And Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

The role of genetic inheritance dominates current evolutionary theory. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, several evolutionary theorists independently speculated that learned behaviors could also affect the direction and rate of evolutionary change. This notion was called the Baldwin effect, after the psychologist James Mark Baldwin. In recent years, philosophers and theorists of a variety of ontological and epistemological backgrounds have begun to employ the Baldwin effect in their accounts of the evolutionary emergence of mind and of how mind, through behavior, might affect evolution.

The essays in this book discuss the originally proposed Baldwin effect, how it …

Developmental Systems, Darwinian Evolution,And The Unity Of Science, Bruce Weber, David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Genetic Biotechnology And Evolutionary Theory: Some Unsolicited Advice, David Depew

David J Depew

In his book The Biotech Century Jeremy Rifkin makes arguments about the dangers of market-driven genetic biotechnology in medical and agricultural contexts. Believing that Darwinism is too compromised by a competitive ethic to resist capitalist depredations of the “genetic commons,” and perhaps hoping to pick up anti-Darwinian allies, he turns for support to unorthodox non-Darwinian views of evolution. The Darwinian tradition, more closely examined, contains resources that might better serve his argument. The robust tradition associated with Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, and others provides an alternative, scientifically sound basis for challenging the rhetoric of genetic reductionism.

The Baldwin Effect: An Archeology, David Depew

David J Depew

Abstract: “The Baldwin effect” stands for a wide variety of ways in which learn ing can be conceived as guiding adap tive evolution ary change. An analysis of the history of this notion reveals that it does not reliably refer either to a theory-neutral empirical phenomenon or to a single theoretical hypothesis. On the contrary, articulations of the general idea depend on distinctive, but in commensurable, theoretical backgrounds. In reconstructing the conceptual history of the Baldwin effect I hope to support contemporary explorations of idea by encouraging the articulation of new theoretical frameworks in which it might make sense. I …

Darwinism And Developmentalism: Prospects For Convergence, David Depew

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Population Thinking And Tree Thinking In Systematics, Robert O’Hara

Robert J. O’Hara

Two new modes of thinking have spread through systematics in the twentieth century. Both have deep historical roots, but they have been widely accepted only during this century. Population thinking overtook the field in the early part of the century, culminating in the full development of population systematics in the 1930s and 1940s, and the subsequent growth of the entire field of population biology. Population thinking rejects the idea that each species has a natural type (as the earlier essentialist view had assumed), and instead sees every species as a varying population of interbreeding individuals. Tree thinking has spread through …

Trees Of History In Systematics And Philology, Robert O’Hara

Robert J. O’Hara

«The Natural System» is the name given to the underlying arrangement present in the diversity of life. Unlike a classification, which is made up of classes and members, a system or arrangement is an integrated whole made up of connected parts. In the pre-evolutionary period a variety of forms were proposed for the Natural System, including maps, circles, stars, and abstract multidimensional objects. The trees sketched by Darwin in the 1830s should probably be considered the first genuine evolutionary diagrams of the Natural System—the first genuine evolutionary trees. Darwin refined his image of the Natural System in the well-known evolutionary …

Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics And The Genealogy Of Natural Selection, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

Darwinism Evolving examines the Darwinian research tradition in evolutionary biology from its inception to its turbulent present, arguing that recent advances in modeling the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems may well catalyze the next major phase of Darwinian evolutionism.While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has from the outset developed and applied its core explanatory concept, natural selection, by borrowing models from dynamics, a branch of physics. The recent development of complex systems dynamics may afford Darwinism yet another occasion to expand its explanatory power.Darwinism's use of dynamical models has received insufficient attention …

Evolution, Ethics, And The Complexity Revolution, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.

Entropy, Information, And Evolution: New Perspectives On Physical And Biological Evolution, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

Can recent developments in thermodynamics and information theory offer a way out of the current crisis in evolutionary theory? One of the most exciting and controversial areas of scientific research in recent years has been the application of the principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics to the problems of the physical evolution of the universe, the origins of life, the structure and succession of ecological systems, and biological evolution. These sixteen original essays by evolutionists, ecologists, molecular biologists, physical chemists, physicists, and philosophers of science provide the best current summary of this developing research program.Chapters in the book's first part - by …

Evolution At A Crossroads: The New Biology And The New Philosophy Of Science, David Depew, Bruce Weber

David J Depew

No abstract provided.