The Nature of Selection
Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10701145 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert N Brandon (0009-0003-7168-1237) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 95 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 614 |
| Publication date | 1986-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | REVIEW |
| Review of | The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus, Elliott Sober, 1993 |
| Venue | The Philosophical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2185056 |
| OpenAlex | W1498210519 |
| Language | EN |
Nature of presents a powerful analysis of the evolutionary concepts of natural selection, fitness, and adaptation. The book 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. As the book unfolds, it provides a straightforward and self-contained introduction to philosophical and biological problems in evolutionary theory.In the first part, Evolutionary Theory as a Theory of Forces, Sober offers an illuminating characterization of the structure of evolutionary theory. Besides laying to rest the spurious charge that theory is vacuous and unscientific, Sober describes the role of chance in evolution and pinpoints the characteristic structure of evolutionary explanations.The book's second part, Group Above and the Gene Below: The Units of Selection Controversy, thoroughly explores the problem of the units of selection, superseding the author's earlier essays, which are widely regarded as the best available treatment of this problem
Analytic philosophy · Cognitive science · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Evolutionary theory · Focus (optics) · Physics · Selection (genetic algorithm) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology
História e filosofia da ciência no ensino de ciências naturais
Darwinismo E Humanidades
Malthus and the Philanthropists, 1764–1859
Learning from early attempts to generalize Darwinian principles to social evolution
Efforts and their feelings
Natural Selection's Explanatory Scope
Teleosemantics
Leyes fundamentales y leyes de la biología
Um exame histórico-filosófico da biologia evolutiva do desenvolvimento
O que é função? Debates na filosofia da biologia contemporânea
Selección natural y condicionamiento de operantes
Methodology of Comparison in Evolutionary Archaeology
The Concept of Evolution in Early Twentieth-Century Americanist Archaeology
Darwin in India
Chasing shadows
What can natural selection explain
The history of Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution
The negative view of natural selection
Probabilistic causation and the explanatory role of natural selection
Darwinism without populations
What was Fisher’s fundamental theorem of natural selection and what was it for
Population and organismal perspectives on trait origins
Adaptive speciation
Gould on species, metaphysics and macroevolution
Descriptions and models
Inclusive fitness as a criterion for improvement
Thinking about evolutionary mechanisms
The origins of the stochastic theory of population genetics
The Hamiltonian view of social evolution
The Selectionist Paradigm
The evolution of human lip-to-lip kissing
Evolutionary implications of design and performance characteristics of prehistoric pottery
Culture and Evolvability
Footbinding, Industrialization, and Evolutionary Explanation
Evolutionary Theory Developing
Sustainable development
Samuel Butler's Contributions to Biological Philosophy
Evaluating behavioral responses to climate change in terms of coping and adaptation
Adapting and coping with climate change in temperate forests
The struggle for existence in 19th-century social theory
The case for methodological pluralism
The Persistence of Memory
OCB as a handicap
Darwin’s sexual selection theory – a forgotten idea
Does culture evolve by means of Darwinian selection? The lessons of Candide's travels
Explanatory goals and explanatory means in multilevel selection theory
A causal dispositional account of fitness
How should we distinguish between selectable and circumstantial traits
Drift as constitutive
Extended inheritance from an organizational point of view
Can populations be healthy? Perspectives from Georges Canguilhem and Geoffrey Rose
Pathways of adaptation to external stressors in coastal natural-resource-dependent communities
Did Darwin initially develop a theory of evolution in the biological sense of the word
Pluralism, realism and the units of selection
Unto others
What’s happening to the family? Interactions between demographic and institutional change
Adding genes and interaction to Smolin’s cosmological natural selection
Variational propensities
The conceptual foundation of the propensity interpretation of fitness
The Evolution of Evolutionary Economics
Developmental Dynamics
A Critical Review of Philosophical Work on the Units of Selection Problem
What kinds of social psychology experiments are of value to perform
An Assessment of Skinner's Theory of Animal Behavior
Integrating Development and Evolution in Psychological Science
Is There Light at the End of This Tunnel
In Defense of Positivist Research Paradigms
The Latest on the Best
How Do We Know if Animals Remember? Proximal Functions and the Distribution of Episodic Memory
The View from the Future
Representation in Cognitive Science
An introduction to niche construction theory
Nagel on reduction11For discussions, in some cases over many decades, thanks are due to Jordi Cat, Alan Love, Ken Schaffner, Abner Shimony, John Stachel, and Bill Wimsatt. Comments by participants of the Formal Epistemology and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism Workshop (University of Texas, Austin, Spring 2013) and the audience at a Philosophy Department seminar at the University of Sydney were also useful. For comments on previous drafts, thanks are due to Justin Garson and Thomas Uebel.
Darwinism and Historical Archaeology
The Scope of Evolutionary Thinking
The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited
Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology
A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value
Varieties of Capitalism
What is altruism
Hamilton’s Rule and Its Discontents
Evolution, Dysfunction, and Disease
Evolution, Wisconsin Style
Signals That Make a Difference
Causal Foundations of Evolutionary Genetics
Pruning the Tree of Life
The Composition of Forces
Why Won't the Group Selection Controversy Go Away
Is Sex Really Necessary? And Other Questions for Lewens
A Justification of Legitimate Teleological Explanations in Physics Education
An epistemic argument for evolutionary dispositions
Sometimes you ride the Pegasus, sometimes you take the road
Non‐Accidental Knowing
The proper role of history in evolutionary explanations
Teleological generics
Multiple Realization and Evolutionary Dynamics
Subject/object asymmetries in the grammar of bilingual and monolingual Spanish speakers
Why G. A. Cohen Can't Appeal to Charles Darwin to Help Him Defend Karl Marx (But Why Others Can)
Theory, Sampling, and Analytical Techniques in the Archaeological Study of Prehistoric Ceramics
Some Relationships between Behavioral and Evolutionary Archaeologies
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |