Adaptive Speciation: The Role of Natural Selection in Mechanisms of Geographic and Non-geographic Speciation (2005)
Baker, Jason M. (Author)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 36
Pages: 303--326
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: “Mechanisms in Biology”
Language: English
Recent discussion of mechanism has suggested new approaches to several issues in the philosophy of science, including theory structure, causal explanation, and reductionism. Here, I apply what I take to be the fruits of the `new mechanical philosophy' to an analysis of a contemporary debate in evolutionary biology about the role of natural selection in speciation. Traditional accounts of that debate focus on the geographic context of genetic divergence---namely, whether divergence in the absence of geographic isolation is possible (or significant). Those accounts are at best incomplete, I argue, because they ignore the mechanisms producing divergence and miss what is at stake in the biological debate. I argue that the biological debate instead concerns the scope of particular speciation mechanisms which assign different roles to natural selection at various stages of divergence. The upshot is a new interpretation of the crux of that debate---namely, whether divergence with gene flow is possible (or significant) and whether the isolating mechanisms producing it are adaptive.
...MoreArticle Craver, Carl F.; Darden, Lindley (2005) Introduction. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 233).
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