In the 1940s, the ‘modern synthesis’ (MS) of Darwinism and genetics cast genetic mutation and recombination as the source of variability from which environmental events naturally select the fittest, such ‘natural selection’ constituting the cause of evolution. Recent biology increasingly challenges this view by casting genes as followers and awarding the leading role in the genesis of adaptations to the agency and plasticity of developing phenotypes—making natural selection a consequence of other causal processes. Both views of natural selection claim to capture the core of Darwin’s arguments in On the Origin of Species. Today, historians largely concur with the MS’s reading of Origin as a book aimed to prove natural selection the cause (vera causa) of adaptive change. This paper finds the evidence for that conclusion wanting. I undertake to examine the context and meaning of all Darwin’s known uses of the phrase vera causa, documenting in particular Darwin’s resistance to the pressure to prove natural selection a vera causa in letters written early in 1860. His resistance underlines the logical dependence of natural selection, an unobservable phenomenon, on the causal processes producing the observable events captured by the laws of inheritance, variation, and the struggle for existence, established in Chapters 1–3 of Origin.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Ulrich Krohs;
(2022)
Darwin’s empirical claim and the janiform character of fitness proxies
(/isis/citation/CBB424930844/)
Article
Pierrick Bourrat;
(2020)
Natural selection and the reference grain problem
(/isis/citation/CBB530242611/)
Article
Birch, Jonathan;
(2012)
The Negative View of Natural Selection
(/isis/citation/CBB001221639/)
Article
Miguel García-Valdecasas;
Terrence W. Deacon;
(2024)
Biological functions are causes, not effects: A critique of selected effects theories
(/isis/citation/CBB854874311/)
Book
Creath, Richard;
Maienschein, Jane;
(2000)
Biology and epistemology
(/isis/citation/CBB000110573/)
Article
Amundson, Ron;
(2014)
Charles Darwin's Reputation: How It Changed during the Twentieth-Century and How It May Change Again
(/isis/citation/CBB001500032/)
Thesis
Pajewski, Alessandro;
(2012)
The Face of Nature: Hume and Darwin on Analogy and Emotion
(/isis/citation/CBB001561023/)
Thesis
Eugene, Earnshaw-Whyte.;
(2012)
Modeling Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001567349/)
Article
Yoichi Ishida;
(2017)
Sewall Wright, shifting balance theory, and the hardening of the modern synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB492038485/)
Thesis
Green, Lisa Anne;
(2012)
Science for Survival: The Modern Synthesis of Evolution and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study
(/isis/citation/CBB001567386/)
Article
María Alejandra Petino Zappala;
(2024)
A framework for the integration of development and evolution: The forgotten legacy of James Meadows Rendel
(/isis/citation/CBB611463058/)
Book
Levine, George Lewis;
(2006)
Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World
(/isis/citation/CBB000772748/)
Article
André Ariew;
Collin Rice;
Yasha Rohwer;
(2015)
Autonomous-Statistical Explanations and Natural Selection
(/isis/citation/CBB996717651/)
Book
Michael Ruse;
(2021)
Philosophy after Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB952503073/)
Article
Thierry Hoquet;
(2024)
Darwin and the White Shipwrecked Sailor: Beyond Blending Inheritance and the Jenkin Myth
(/isis/citation/CBB541044017/)
Article
Lawson, Anton E.;
(2009)
On the Hypothetico-Deductive Nature of Science---Darwin's Finches
(/isis/citation/CBB001032859/)
Article
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2009)
Do We Need a Non-Darwinian Industry?
(/isis/citation/CBB001022696/)
Article
Alan Grafen;
(2019)
Should we ask for more than consistency of Darwinism with Mendelism?
(/isis/citation/CBB453166142/)
Article
John Beatty;
(2019)
The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part II: The Synthesis and Since
(/isis/citation/CBB067118452/)
Article
Brandon A. Conley;
(2019)
Mayr and Tinbergen: disentangling and integrating
(/isis/citation/CBB308076732/)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Biology and Philosophy
Journal of the History of Biology
British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
Be the first to comment!