IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB291217176

Disentangling life: Darwin, selectionism, and the postgenomic return of the environment (2017)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 62
Pages: 10-19

URI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848617300171

DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2017.02.002

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Moral and ethical aspects Science and ethics Adaptation (biology) Evolution Darwinism Natural selection Environmentalism 20th century 19th century

In this paper, I analyze the disruptive impact of Darwinian selectionism for the century-long tradition in which the environment had a direct causative role in shaping an organism's traits. In the case of humans, the surrounding environment often determined not only the physical, but also the mental and moral features of individuals and whole populations. With its apparatus of indirect effects, random variations, and a much less harmonious view of nature and adaptation, Darwinian selectionism severed the deep imbrication of organism and milieu posited by these traditional environmentalist models. This move had radical implications well beyond strictly biological debates. In my essay, I discuss the problematization of the moral idiom of environmentalism by William James and August Weismann who adopted a selectionist view of the development of mental faculties. These debates show the complex moral discourse associated with the environmentalist-selectionist dilemma. They also well illustrate how the moral reverberations of selectionism went well beyond the stereotyped associations with biological fatalism or passivity of the organism. Rereading them today may be helpful as a genealogical guide to the complex ethical quandaries unfolding in the current postgenomic scenario in which a revival of new environmentalist themes is taking place.

...More

Citation URI

http://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB291217176/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Ruse, Michael; Travis, Joseph; (2009)
Evolution: The First Four Billion Years (/isis/citation/CBB001232307/)

Article Alan Grafen; (2019)
Should we ask for more than consistency of Darwinism with Mendelism? (/isis/citation/CBB453166142/)

Essay Review Richards, Evelleen; (2012)
Survey Review (/isis/citation/CBB001566339/)

Article Moreno, Juan; (2009)
Lamarck necesita a Darwin: la búsqueda de intención en el estudio de la evolución y de la historia (/isis/citation/CBB001020976/)

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

Article Bowler, Peter J.; (2008)
What Darwin Disturbed: The Biology That Might Have Been (/isis/citation/CBB000850417/)

Book Hodge, M. J. S.; (2008)
Before and after Darwin: Origins, Species, Cosmogonies, and Ontologies (/isis/citation/CBB000952045/)

Book Prochiantz, Alain; (2010)
Darwin, 200 ans (/isis/citation/CBB001024540/)

Chapter Davis, Frederick R.; (2009)
Papilio Dardanus: The Natural Animal from the Experimentalist's Point of View (/isis/citation/CBB001022527/)

Chapter Rudge, David Wyss; (2009)
H. B. D. Kettlewell's Research, 1934--1961: The Influence of J. W. Heslop Harrison (/isis/citation/CBB001022528/)

Article Depew, David J.; (2011)
Adaptation as Process: The Future of Darwinism and the Legacy of Theodosius Dobzhansky (/isis/citation/CBB001023991/)

Article Kouprianov, Alexei V.; (2011)
The “Soviet Creative Darwinism” (1930s--1950s): From the Selective Reading of Darwin's Works to the Transmutation of Species (/isis/citation/CBB001220379/)

Article Deichmann, Ute; (2010)
Gemmules and Elements: On Darwin's and Mendel's Concepts and Methods in Heredity (/isis/citation/CBB001230066/)

Article Richards, Robert J.; (2012)
Darwin's Principles of Divergence and Natural Selection: Why Fodor Was Almost Right (/isis/citation/CBB001221609/)

Article Hall, Brian K.; (2006)
“Evolutionist and Missionary,” the Reverend John Thomas Gulick (1832--1923). Part II. Coincident or Ontogenetic Selection---The Baldwin Effect (/isis/citation/CBB001230143/)

Book Borrello, Mark E.; (2010)
Evolutionary Restraints: The Contentious History of Group Selection (/isis/citation/CBB001033348/)

Book Cain, Joe; Ruse, Michael; Burkhardt, Frederick; (2009)
Descended from Darwin: Insights into the History of Evolutionary Studies, 1900--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB001020901/)

Article Baravalle, Lorenzo; (2014)
Potencialidades e limites das explicaçães evolutivas da cultura: um enfoque diacrônico (/isis/citation/CBB001420719/)

Book Johnson, Dirk R.; (2010)
Nietzsche's Anti-Darwinism (/isis/citation/CBB001023122/)

Article Nash, Richard; (2015)
William Keith Brooks and the Naturalist's Defense of Darwinism in the Late-Nineteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB001510220/)