Philosophy of biology
A guide to some of the developments that have occurred in the philosophy of biology. Covering such issues as evolutionary theory, creationism, teleology, nature versus nurture and sociobiology, this book provides an overview of the current state of play in this rapidly-changing discipline.
xix, 231 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780813307855, 9780813308241, 0813307856, 0813308240
26974492
1. What Is Evolutionary Theory?
1.1. What Is Evolution?
1.2. The Place of Evolutionary Theory in Biology
1.3. Pattern and Process
1.4. Historical Particulars and General Laws
1.5. The Causes of Evolution
1.6. The Domains of Biology and Physics
1.7. Biological Explanations and Physical Explanations
2. Creationism
2.1. The Danger of Anachronism
2.2. Paley's Watch and the Likelihood Principle
2.3. Hume's Critique
2.4. Why Natural Selection Isn't a Random Process
2.5. Two Kinds of Similarity
2.6. The Problem of Predictive Equivalence
2.7. Is the Design Hypothesis Unscientific?
2.8. The Incompleteness of Science
3. Fitness
3.1. An Idealized Life Cycle
3.2. The Interpretation of Probability
3.3. Two Ways to Find Out About Fitness
3.4. The Tautology Problem
3.5. Supervenience
3.6. Advantageousness and Fitness
3.7. Teleology Naturalized
4. The Units of Selection Problem
4.1. Hierarchy
4.2. Adaptation and Fortuitous Benefit
4.3. Decoupling Parts and Wholes
4.4. Red Herrings
4.5. Examples
4.6. Correlation, Cost, and Benefit
5. Adaptationism
5.1. What Is Adaptationism?
5.2. How Genetics Can Get in the Way
5.3. Is Adaptationism Untestable?
5.4. The Argument from Complex Traits
5.5. If Optimality Models Are Too Easy to Produce, Let's Make Them Harder
5.6. Game Theory
6. Systematics
6.1. The Death of Essentialism
6.2. Individuality and the Species Problem
6.3. Three Systematic Philosophies
6.4. Internal Coherence
6.5. Phylogenetic Inference Based on Overall Similarity
6.6. Parsimony and Phylogenetic Inference
7. Sociobiology and the Extension of Evolutionary Theory
7.1. Biological Determinism
7.2. Does Sociobiology Have an Ideological Function?
7.3. Anthropomorphism Versus Linguistic Puritanism
7.4. Ethics
7.5. Models of Cultural Evolution