Horst Dürr 2020, DAS KOMPATIBILITÄTS-KONZEPT Kern einer neuen Sicht auf die Evolutionstheorie (original) (raw)
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Ecological Aspects of the Evolutionary Processes
Zoological Science, 2003
Darwin in his On the Origin of species made it clear that evolutionary change depends on the combined action of two different causes, the first being the origin of genetically based phenotypic variation in the individual organisms comprising the population and the second being the action of selective agents of the external environment placing demands on the individual organisms. For over a century following Darwin, most evolutionists focused on the origin of inherited variation and its transmission; many workers continue to regard genetics to be the core of evolutionary theory. Far less attention has been given to the exact nature of the selective agents with most evolutionists still treating this cause imprecisely to the detriment of our understanding of both nomological and historical evolutionary theory.
Heams T Huneman P Lecointre G Silberstein M Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014
One of Darwin’s major contributions to our understanding of evolution, namely natural selection, seems a very simple idea. However natural selection is a very subtle concept and biologists and philosophers have been struggling for decades to make sense of it and justify its explanatory power. In this chapter, first I present the most general formulations of natural selection in terms of necessary conditions, and I argue that none of them capture all the aspects of the concept. Second, I question the explanatory status of selection, asking what exactly it is supposed to explain, and considering its relationship with stochastic factors (i.e. genetic drift). Second, I investigate its metaphysical status, asking whether it can be seen as a law, and to what extent it would deprive evolution of any contingency. The last section presents controversies about the units and levels of selection, and, after exposing the philosophical assumptions proper to various positions, sketches a pluralist conception.
On fitness and adaptedness and their role in evolutionary explanation
Journal of the History of Biology, 1986
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Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction form the building blocks of the (Neo-)Darwinian research program, and several of these have been called "Darwinian principles." Here, we suggest that caution should be taken in calling these principles Darwinian because of the important role played by reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes in also bringing about these phenomena. Reticulate mechanisms and processes include symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity mediated by genetic and organismal mobility, and hybridization. Because the "Darwinian principles" are brought about by both vertical and reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes, they should be understood as foundational for a more pluralistic theory of evolution, one that surpasses the classic scope of the Modern and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Reticulate evolution moreover demonstrates that what conventional (Neo-)Darwinian theories treat as intra-species features of evolution frequently involve reticulate interactions between organisms from very different taxonomic categories. Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction therefore cannot be understood as "traits" or "properties" of genes, organisms, species, or ecosystems because the phenomena are irreducible to specific units and levels of an evolutionary hierarchy. Instead, these general principles of evolution need to be understood as common goods that come about through interactions between different units and levels of evolutionary hierarchies, and they are exherent rather than inherent properties of individuals.
as a Post-Modern evolutionary metaphor
Revista Chilena de Historia Natural, 1998
The shift in evolutionary metaphors, from the Darwinian natural selection to natural drift proposed by Maturana, Mpodozis and Varela conveys a turn in worldviews. We argue that the former metaphor retains links with a Modern worldview, while the second, in detaching itself clearly from the notion of progress, is characteristically Post-Modern. We suggest that metaphors represent a key for understanding the links between scientific explanations and the cultural and social contexts in which they are formulated. To explain ...
Reconceptualising Evolution by Natural Selection
This thesis examines the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the concept of natural selection which is pervasively invoked in biology and other ‘evolutionary’ domains. Although what constitutes the process of natural selection appears to be very intuitive (natural selection results from entities exhibiting differences in fitness in a population), this conceals a number of theoretical ambiguities and difficulties. Some of these have been pointed out numerous times; others have hardly been noticed. One aim of this work is to unpack these difficulties and ambiguities; another is to provide new solutions and clarifications to them using a range of philosophical and conceptual tools. The result is a concept of natural selection stripped down from its biological specificities. I start by revisiting the entangled debates over whether natural selection is a cause of evolutionary change as opposed to a mere statistical effect of other causes, at what level this putative cause operates and whether it can be distinguished from drift. Borrowing tools from the causal modelling literature, I argue that natural selection is best conceived as a causal process resulting from individual level differences in a population. I then move to the question of whether the process of natural selection requires perfect transmission of types. I show that this question is ambiguous and can find different answers. From there, I distinguish the process of natural selection from some of its possible products, namely, evolution by natural selection and complex adaptation. I argue that reproduction and inheritance are conceptually distinct from natural selection, and using individual-based models, I demonstrate that they can be conceived as evolutionary products of it. This ultimately leads me to generalise the concepts of heritability and fitness used in the formal equations of evolutionary change. Finally, I argue that concepts of fitness and natural selection crucially depend on the grains of description at and temporal scales over which evolutionary explanations are given. These considerations reveal that the metaphysical status of the process of natural selection is problematic and why neglecting them can lead to flawed arguments in the levels of selection debate.