Comprehensive Course Guide

Description:
It has been suggested that in order to evoke the Darwinian Revolution a radical change in conceptual framework was required.  In short, the biological world had to be seen to be constituted by populations of variant individuals rather than by instances of Aristotelian essential types.  How did Darwin represent nature?  Is Darwin’s theory anti-essentialist in a global way? Do all scientific theories display some features of essentialism? 

Readings:
1. Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species (1st edition facsimile), Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964. Chapters 1-4.

2. Mayr, E. Darwin and natural selection. American Scientist (1977) 65: 321-327.

3. Mayr, E. “Typological versus Population Thinking” reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT 1994. pp. 155-160

4. Sober, E. “Evolution, Population Thinking and Essentialism” reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, 1994.  pp. 161-190. 

Description:
Darwin argued for both the fact of evolution (species have evolved over time) and a mechanism for evolution (primarily, natural selection).  What is a species?  Is it a natural kind definable by necessary and sufficient conditions? Is it a similarity class based on morphological or genetic features?  Is it an interbreeding population?  Or is a species an individual, historical entity (a lineage) changing morphological or genetic features over time?   “Species” terminology is used for both classification and for identifying the units of evolutionary change.  Is there a unified conception of species for all purposes? 

2.  Mishler, Brent and Brandon, Robert. “Individuality, Pluralism and The Phylogentic Species Concept”. Rerpinted in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds). The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp. 300-318.

3. Marc Ereshefsky “Eliminative Pluralism”. Reprinted in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds).  The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp. 348-368
 

Readings:
1. Reeve and Sherman “Adaptation”, in Journal of Theoretical Biology. Adaptation. In Encyclopedia of Life Sciences, Nature Publishing Group, London, www.els.net.

2. Gould and Lewontin “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme”, reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, 1994. pp. 73-90.

3. John Maynard Smith “Optimization Theory in Evolution”, reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, pp. 91-118.

Description:
If not every feature of every organism is adaptive, how else can its presence be explained?  One suggestion from developmental considerations is that some features are “self-organized” or byproducts of selection for other features.  Are adaptive and non-adaptive explanations in competition or are they compatible? 

2. Mitchell, S. "On Pluralism and Integration in Evolutionary Explanations", American Zoologist, vol. 32, 1992, pp. 135-144.

3. Mitchell “Complexity and Pluralism.” Mss.

Description:
The function of the dark pigmentation on the peppered-moth’s wings is to camouflage moths from predatory birds.   The function of the heart is to pump blood.   How is a biological function identified?  What makes one consequence of a feature a function and another consequence not a function?  What do biological functions explain?  Two major explanatory paradigms have been developed – an etiological/teleological account of function and a systemic/descriptive account of function.  What is the difference between the two and which is the correct account? 

Readings:
1. Larry Wright “Functions” reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, 1994. pp. 27-49.

2. Robert Cummins “Functional Analysis” reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, 1994. pp. 49-70.
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Description:
A more recent foray into the functional explanation debate has suggested that biological function, like biological fitness, is dispositional.   A function confers a capacity for survival and reproduction.  What does it mean to say that fitness or function is a dispositional property?  What does this type of analysis allow one to explain by fitness or function?

2. Bigelow and Pargetter. “Functions”. Journal of Philosophy, 1987; 84: 181-196.

3. Mitchell, S. "Etiologies or Dispositions: A comment on Bigelow and Pargetter” Journal of Philosophy, 1993; 90(5): 249-259.
 

Description:
A continuing debate in biology and philosophy of biology concerns the units of selection.  There are two types of issues that get discussed under this label.  The first is, what processes actually occur in nature? – i.e. does selection operate only on single genes (or “replicators”) or does is also act on higher levels of organization, like the gamete, the individual organism, the group, or the species? The second has to do with reasons for preferring one type of representation of processes and results of evolution by natural selection to another.  Can evolutionary phenomena be best captured by treating selection as if it occurred only at the level of the gene (or, more accurately, the “replicator”)?  Is something gained by representing the process as operating on a hierarchy of different levels of selection?  The “gene’s eye” view has been promoted as solving some outstanding confusions in biology as well as criticized for being too reductionist. 

Readings:
1. Hull, Introduction to Part III,  in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds).  The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp.149-152.

2. Kitcher , P. and Sterelny, K.. “The Return of the Gene” in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds.) The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp. 1523-175.

3. Brandon, R. “The Levels of Selection:  A Hierarchy of Interactors” in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds.) The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp. 1756-197.

4. Sober, E. and Wilson, S. D. “ A Critical Review of Philosophical Work on the Units of Selection Problem” in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds.) The Philosophy of Biology, Oxford, 1998. pp. 198-220.

Description:
A hierarchical picture of natural selection has been related to views about the nature of the organism itself.  Leo Buss, for example, has argued that the evolution of muticellular organisms from single-celled organisms is a history of competition and resolution of that competition by the introduction of new levels at which selection operates.  Sober and Sloan Wilson have joined a trend to revive the “superorganism” metaphor for social insect colonies to further strengthen the hierarchical approach.  The evolution and constitution of the organism (super or not) has to take into account both the evolutionary processes of change and the ontogenetic processes of development.  How do assumptions about development affect the types of types of entities subject to evolutionary processes?

Readings:
1. Buss, Leo. The Evolution of Individuality. Princeton University Press, 1987.

2. Sober, E and Wilson, S. D.. “The Revival of the Superorganism”. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1989, 136, pp. 337-56.

3. Mitchell and Page. "Idiosyncratic Paradigms and the Revival of the Superorganism", co-authored with Robert E. Page, Jr., Report NR. 26/92 of the Research Group on Biological Foundations of Human Culture, Bielefeld, Germany, 1992.

Reduction:  Mendel vs. Molecules

Description:
Besides the elaboration and clarification of the mechanisms of natural selection, a necessary component of evolutionary theory is an account of inheritance.  The nature of the physical basis of inheritance, the ways in which features are transmitted from parent to offspring, and the ways in which from a single cell a complex array of different cell types differentiate to form a developing organism all invoke the gene. In the 1950’s Watson and Crick discovered the molecular structure of the gene.  What is the relationship between Mendel’s functional genes to the double-helix?  If Vitalism is rejected, and all biological entities are made up of physical entities, can Mendelian genetics be reduced to molecular genetics?

2. Waters “Why the Antireductionist Consensus Won’t Survive the Case of Classical Mendelian Genetics”, reprinted in E. Sober (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 2nd Edition, MIT, 1998. pp. 401-418
 

Description:
Besides the question of theory-theory reduction for Mendelian and Molecular Genetics, there is the question of the explanatory reduction of behavior by genetics.  Can complex human behaviors such as rape, alcoholism, schizophrenia, PKU disease etc. be explained by genetics?  The newspapers report progress in the Human Genome Initiative that increasingly identifies “genes for” a wide range of behaviors and conditions.  Yet philosophers of biology continue for form an antireductionist consensus.  Schaffner presents a detailed account of the behavioral genetics of a simple system, the nematode c. elegans in order to explicate how genes are used to explain behavior and to sophisticate the nature/nurture debate.

Readings:
1. Schaffner, K.  “Genes, Behaviors, and Developmental Emergentism: One Process, Indivisible?” Philosophy of Science, 65, pp. 209-252, 1998.

2. Griffiths and Knight. “What is the Developmentalist Challenge?" Philosophy of Science, 65, pp. 253--258, 1998.

3. Gilbert and Jorgensen. “Wormwholes:  A Commentary on K. F. Schaffner’s “Genes….” Philosophy of Science, 65, pp. 259-266, 1998.

4. Wimsatt.“Simple Systems and Phylogenetic Diversity” Philosophy of Science, 65, pp. 267-275, 1998.

5. Schaffner, K. “Model Organisms and Behavioral Genetics: A Rejoinder” Philosophy of Science, 65, pp. 276-288, 1998.

Readings:
1. Colin Allen and Marc Hauser “Concept Attribution in Nonhuman Animals:  Theoretical and Methodological Problems in Ascribing Complex Mental Processes” in Bekoff and Jamieson (eds.) Readings in Animal Cognition, MIT, 1996. pp. 47-62.

2. Jamieson, D. and Bekoff, M.  “On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology” in Bekoff and Jamieson (eds.) Readings in Animal Cognition, MIT, 1996. pp. 65-78.

3. Dupre, J. “The Mental Lives of Nonhuman Animals” in Bekoff and Jamieson (eds.) Readings in Animal Cognition, MIT, 1996. pp. 323-336.

4. Akins “A Bat without Qualities”, in Bekoff and Jamieson (eds.) Readings in Animal Cognition, 1996. MIT, pp. 345-358.