Thesis ID: CBB001567542

Chance in Evolutionary Theory: Fitness, Selection, and Genetic Drift in Philosophical and Historical Perspective (2014)

unapi

Pence, Charles H. (Author)


University of Notre Dame
Ramsey, Grant


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Ramsey, Grant.
Physical Details: 251 pp.
Language: English

Discussions of the foundations of evolutionary theory - especially natural selection, fitness, and genetic drift - are saturated with terms referring to various kinds of chance, stochasticity, randomness, unpredictability, and so forth. This dissertation examines these uses of chance in philosophical and historical perspective. I begin by arguing that, both in the contemporary and historical arenas, the current state of the literature on chance is deeply troubling. Work in the philosophy of biology (i) often conflates various clearly distinct notions of chance, and (ii) often approaches the analysis of chance from the perspective of a debate (on the causal potency of natural selection and genetic drift) that does not in fact profitability engage evolutionary theory. Historically, as well, the most common way of analyzing the development of the use of chance in evolutionary theory does not engage the actual research of historical actors, a point I make by exploring the work of Karl Pearson and W.F.R.Weldon at the turn of the twentieth century. I thus propose a new guiding question for research into the role of chance in evolutionary theory: what is the relationship between our statistical biological theories and the processes in the world those theories aim to describe? I then offer a novel framework for determining the answer to this question, derived from a deeply biologically-informed understanding of fitness, selection, and drift. This view combines core insights from work in philosophy on the propensity interpretation of fitness with cutting-edge biological treatments of population modeling. Chance enters this model at only a single point - the distribution over the various possible lives that an organism might live - and this single source can explain the influence of chance throughout fitness, natural selection, and genetic drift. This framework, I claim, constitutes a fruitful way to understand both the foundations of evolutionary theory and the role of chance in those foundations.

...More

Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/09(E), Mar 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1547351149.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567542/

Similar Citations

Article Charles H. Pence; (2015)
The Early History of Chance in Evolution (/isis/citation/CBB068013192/)

Article Magnello, M. Eileen; (2009)
Karl Pearson and the Establishment of Mathematical Statistics (/isis/citation/CBB001033897/)

Book Achinstein, Peter; (2005)
Scientific Evidence: Philosophical Theories and Applications (/isis/citation/CBB000550211/)

Article Radick, Gregory; (2011)
Physics in the Galtonian Sciences of Heredity (/isis/citation/CBB001023997/)

Book Rushton, Alan R.; (2009)
Genetics in Medicine in Great Britain 1600 to 1939 (/isis/citation/CBB001020882/)

Article Farrall, Lyndsay A.; (1975)
Controversy and conflict in science: A case study--The English biometric school and Mendel's laws (/isis/citation/CBB000017895/)

Article Teicher, Amir; (2014)
Mendel's Use of Mathematical Modelling: Ratios, Predictions and the Appeal to Tradition (/isis/citation/CBB001510272/)

Article Ernesto Schwartz-Marín; Peter Wade; (2015)
Explaining the visible and the invisible: Public knowledge of genetics, ancestry, physical appearance and race in Colombia (/isis/citation/CBB461617867/)

Article Philippe Huneman; (2019)
Revisiting Darwinian teleology: A case for inclusive fitness as design explanation (/isis/citation/CBB392966411/)

Article Churchill, Frederick B.; (2010)
August Weismann Embraces the Protozoa (/isis/citation/CBB001022396/)

Book Groeben, Christiane; Kaasch, Joachim; Kaasch, Michael; (2005)
Stätten biologischer Forschung: Beiträge zur 12. Jahrestagung der DGGTB in Neapel 2003 (/isis/citation/CBB000770191/)

Book Brzezinski Prestes, Maria Elice; Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira; Stefano, Waldir; (2006)
Filosofia e História da Biologia 1 (/isis/citation/CBB000820181/)

Article Ruse, Michael; (2005)
Was There a Darwinian Revolution? (/isis/citation/CBB000933662/)

Book Engels, Eve-Marie; Glick, Thomas F.; (2008)
The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe (/isis/citation/CBB001022466/)

Authors & Contributors
Pence, Charles H.
Magnello, M. Eileen
Ernesto Schwartz-Marín
Holmes, Tarquin
Teicher, Amir
Wynn, James
Concepts
Genetics
Evolution
Darwinism
Biology
Heredity
Probability and statistics
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
17th century
21st century
Places
Great Britain
Naples (Italy)
Colombia
Italy
Germany
Europe
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Biologie, Berlin
Royal Society of London
Stazione Zoologica di Napoli
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment