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The Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-875213-4. Sober, Elliott (1993). Philosophy of Biology. Dimensions of Philosophy Series. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-0785-5. LCCN 92037484. OCLC 26974492. Williams, George C. (1966). Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current ...
Adaptation is a major topic in the philosophy of biology, as it concerns function and purpose . Some biologists try to avoid terms which imply purpose in adaptation, not least because they suggest a deity's intentions, but others note that adaptation is necessarily purposeful.
Function can be defined in a variety of ways, [6] [7] including as adaptation, [8] as contributing to evolutionary fitness, [9] in animal behaviour, [10] and, as discussed below, also as some kind of causal role or goal in the philosophy of biology. [11]
The presence of real or apparent teleology in explanations of natural selection is a controversial aspect of the philosophy of biology, not least for its echoes of natural theology. [ 1 ] [ 7 ] The English natural theologian John Ray , and later William Derham , used teleological arguments to illustrate the glory of God from nature.
The paper criticizes the adaptationist school of thought that was prevalent in evolutionary biology at the time using two metaphors: that of the spandrels in St Mark's Basilica, a cathedral in Venice, Italy, and that of the fictional character "Pangloss" in Voltaire's novella Candide.
In evolutionary biology, a spandrel is a phenotypic trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection. Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin brought the term into biology in their 1979 paper " The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the ...
Evolutionary epistemology can refer to a branch of inquiry in epistemology that applies the concepts of biological evolution to the growth of animal and human cognition. It argues that the mind is in part genetically determined and that its structure and function reflect adaptation, a nonteleological process of interaction between the organism and its environment.
Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1988) is a book by Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr. [ 1 ]