Sewall Wright introduced the metaphor of evolution on “adaptive landscapes” in a pair of papers published in 1931 and 1932. The metaphor has been one of the most influential in modern evolutionary biology, although recent theoretical advancements show that it is deeply flawed and may have actually created research questions that are not, in fact, fecund. In this paper I examine in detail what Wright actually said in the 1932 paper, as well as what he thought of the matter at (...) the very end of his career, in 1988. While the metaphor is flawed, some of the problems which Wright was attempting to address are still with us today, and are in the process of being reformulated as part of a forthcoming Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. (shrink)

The debate about the levels of selection has been one of the most controversial both in evolutionary biology and in philosophy of science. Okasha’s book makes the sort of contribution that simply will not be able to be ignored by anyone interested in this field for many years to come. However, my interest here is in highlighting some examples of how Okasha goes about discussing his material to suggest that his book is part of an increasingly interesting trend that sees (...) scientists and philosophers coming together to build a broadened concept of “theory” through a combination of standard mathematical treatments and conceptual analyses. Given the often contentious history of the relationship between philosophy and science, such trend cannot but be welcome. (shrink)

The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity) are not (...) presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations. (shrink)

In our opinion, the discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds is much broader and deeper than most researchers admit. We are happy to report that Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) target article strongly corroborates our unpopular hypothesis, and that the comparative evidence, in turn, bolsters E&L's provocative argument. Both a Universal Grammar and the “mental continuity” between human and nonhuman minds turn out to be modern myths.

During the past decades, our image ofHomo neanderthalensishas changed dramatically. Initially, Neanderthals were seen as primitive brutes. Increasingly, however, Neanderthals are regarded as basically human. New discoveries and technologies have led to an avalanche of data, and as a result of that it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint what the difference between modern humans and Neanderthals really is. And yet, the persistent quest for a minimal difference which separates them from us is still noticeable in Neanderthal research. Neanderthal discourse is (...) a vantage point from which the logic of ‘us’ versus ‘other’ is critically reconsidered. Studying contemporary academic literature and science autobiographies from an oblique perspective, focusing not on Neanderthals as objects, but on the dynamics of interaction between Neanderthal researchers and their finds, basic convictions at work in this type of research are retrieved. What is at issue is not the actual distinction between modern humans and Neanderthals, but rather the dualistic construction of human and nonhuman. Neanderthal understanding is affected by the desire to safeguard human uniqueness. The overall trend is to identify the human mark or spark, which defines us as favoured ‘winners’. The paradoxes emerging in contemporary Neanderthal discourse are symptomatic of the fact that a dualistic style of thinking is no longer tenable. (shrink)

This paper argues that philosophers should pay more attention to the idea of ecosystem engineering and to the scientific literature surrounding it. Ecosystem engineering is a broad but clearly delimited concept that is less subject to many of the “it encompasses too much” criticisms that philosophers have directed at niche construction . The limitations placed on the idea of ecosystem engineering point the way to a narrower idea of niche construction. Moreover, experimental studies in the ecosystem engineering literature provide detailed (...) accounts of particular empirical situations in which we cannot neglect the O term in dE /dt = g (O, E), which helps us get beyond verbal arguments and simple models purporting to show that niche construction must not be ignored as a factor in evolution. Finally, this literature demonstrates that while ecosystem engineering studies may not require us to embrace a new evolutionary process, as niche construction advocates have claimed, they do teach us that the myriad abiotic factors concealed by the abstract term ‘environment’ are often controlled in large part by organisms. (shrink)

In 1749, Linnaeus presided over the dissertation "Oeconomia Naturae," which argued that each creature plays an important and particular role in nature 's economy. This phrase should be familiar to readers of Darwin, for he claims in the Origin that "all organic beings are striving, it may be said, to seize on each place in the economy of nature." Many scholars have discussed the influence of political economy on Darwin's ideas. In this paper, I take a different tack, showing that (...) Darwin's idea of an economy of nature stemmed from the views of earlier naturalists like Linnaeus and Lyell. I argue, in the first section of the paper, that Linnaeus' idea of oeconomia naturae is derived from the idea of the animal economy, and that his idea of politia naturae is an extension of the idea of a politia civitatis. In the second part, I explore the use of the concept of stations in the work of De Candolle and Lyell – the precursor to Darwin's concept of places. I show in the third part of the paper that the idea of places in an economy of nature is employed by Darwin at many key points in his thinking: his discussion of the Galapagos birds, his reading of Malthus, etc. Finally, in the last section, I demonstrate that the idea of a place in nature 's economy is essential to Darwin's account of divergence. To tell his famous story of divergence and adaptation, Darwin needed the economy of nature. (shrink)

How can the history of research ethics be expanded beyond the standard narrative of codification—a story that does not reach back beyond World War II—without becoming so broad as to lose all distinctiveness? This article proposes a history of research ethics focused on the “scientific self,” that is, the role-specific identity of scientists as typically described in terms of skills, competencies, qualities, or dispositions. Drawing on three agenda-setting texts from nineteenth-century history, biology, and sociology, the article argues that the “revolutions” (...) these books sought to unleash were, among other things, revolts against inherited conceptions of scientific selfhood. They tried to redefine the scientific self in their respective fields of inquiry by advocating particular catalogs of virtues or character traits. These ideals of selfhood, their contested nature notwithstanding, translated into practice in so far as they influenced hiring and selection policies and found their way into educational systems. The project of reclaiming the scientific self as an important subject of study in the history of research ethics is not an antiquarian pursuit, but related to an ethical question faced by scientists today: How are their scientific selves being shaped by funding schemes, research evaluation protocols, and academic hiring policies? (shrink)

The great majority of species that lived on this earth have gone extinct. These extinctions are often explained by invoking changes in the environment, to which the species has been unable to adapt. Evolutionary suicide is an alternative explanation to such extinctions. It is an evolutionary process in which a viable population adapts in such a way that it can no longer persist. In this paper different models, where evolutionary suicide occurs are discussed, and the theory behind the phenomenon is (...) reviewed. (shrink)

The article reconstructs the main lines of three hypotheses in the current literature concerning the evolutionary pace which characterized the natural history of human language: the “continuist” and gradualist perspective, the “discontinuist” and evolution-free perspective, and the “punctuationist” view. This current debate appears to have a long history, which starts at least from Darwin’s time. The article highlights the similarities between the old and the modern debates in terms of history of ideas, and it shows the current limits of each (...) of these perspectives. In the final part, we present an alternative approach which considers human language not as a single trait, but as the result of a mosaic of different elements, some of which recently evolved, and some others gradually evolved and phylogenetically ancient. When matched with a tree thinking and comparative perspective, this view suggests that expressions of symbolic and linguistic behaviors in other human species could have preceded the more complex and systematic behaviors showed by Homo sapiens. (shrink)

This paper is about the rationality of methodological variance, where changes in method and methodology of science may be warranted/triggered by the urgency of finding alternatives to the methodology currently in fashion that fails to address the relevant and pressing problems. It deals obliquely with Maxwell‘s criticisms of Pandit, offering only a bare sketch of appraisal of his methodological proposals of AOE, AOR and WI, not only as going beyond SR but as better alternatives to dominant methodologies such as that (...) of Karl R. Popper, without rehearsing or recycling Maxwell‘s well-known arguments in great detail. More importantly, how these proposals improve upon the eighteenth century Enlightenment idea of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social/cultural progress towards an enlightened world, i.e., a world that is sensitive to problems of living and human well-being, is discussed. Having dealt with such problems in Pandit, the present appraisal is limited to the rationality of understanding, or better of rethinking, academic inquiry within the wider contexts and reaches of wisdom inquiry, with particular reference to the pressing global problems including those problems that are traceable to ETS progress, which is itself often found to violate the principle of interconnectedness across nature. (shrink)

A recent analysis of the genomes of Darwin's finches revealed extensive interspecies allele sharing throughout the history of the radiation and identified a key locus responsible for morphological evolution in this group. The radiation of Darwin's finches on the Galápagos archipelago has long been regarded as an iconic study system for field ecology and evolutionary biology. Coupled with an extensive history of field work, these latest findings affirm the increasing acceptance of introgressive hybridization, or gene flow between species, as a (...) significant contributor to adaptive evolution. Here, we review and discuss these findings in relation to both classical work on Darwin's finches and contemporary work showing similar evolutionary signatures in other biological systems. The continued unification of genomic data with field biology promises to further elucidate the molecular basis of adaptation in Darwin's finches and well beyond. (shrink)

Fisher recognized that the evolution of social insect colonies needed explaining, a point which Charles Darwin had avoided discussing in detail. Fisher, in his 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, outlined in detail how eusociality could evolve, and developed a verbal model by connecting selection on fecundity with the sterility of workers. Fisher saw social insect colonies as harmonious units, in contrast to human societies that exhibit intra-communal conflict. Fisher’s development of the model was strongly influenced by his (...) correspondence with Leonard Darwin, and so I call it the Fisher-Darwin model. However, Fisher was not influenced by Lamarckian views on the evolution of social insects that were common at that time. The Fisher-Darwin model presages almost exactly the mathematical model recently proposed by Nowak and colleagues. (shrink)

In the cave allegory, Plato illustrates his theory of ideas by showing that the world man senses and tries to understand, actually only is a dim representation of the real world. We know the allegory for its light and shadow; however, there is also sound and echo in the cave. In this article, I discuss whether the narrative of the prisoners in the cave is in tune with an audial experience and whether an allegory led by sound corresponds to the (...) one led by sight. I start with a phenomenological analysis of the cave as a place of sound. After that, I elaborate on the training of attentive listening skills and its ramifications for pedagogical practice. I conclude that there are profound differences between seeing and listening and that sound reveals different aspects of “the real” compared to sight. The significance of Plato’s cave allegory should be evaluated in relation to modern, scientific thought characterised by a visual-spatial language. With support of this allegory, the light-shadow polarity has become the Urbild of represented reality. At the same time, a visually oriented culture of ideas repeatedly confirms Plato’s cave allegory as its central metaphor. Finally, an elaboration on the sounds in the cave proves to be fruitful in an educational sense: The comparison of sound and sight sharpens the differences and complementarities of audial and visual experiences. (shrink)

The ‘Tree of Life’ is intended to represent the pattern of evolutionary processes that result in bifurcating species lineages. Often justified in reference to Darwin’s discussions of trees, the Tree of Life has run up against numerous challenges especially in regard to prokaryote evolution. This special issue examines scientific, historical and philosophical aspects of debates about the Tree of Life, with the aim of turning these criticisms towards a reconstruction of prokaryote phylogeny and even some aspects of the standard evolutionary (...) understanding of eukaryotes. These discussions have arisen out of a multidisciplinary collaboration of people with an interest in the Tree of Life, and we suggest that this sort of focused engagement enables a practical understanding of the relationships between biology, philosophy and history. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr’s influence on philosophy of biology has given the field a particular perspective on evolution, phylogeny and life in general. Using debates about the tree of life as a guide, I show how Mayrian evolutionary biology excludes numerous forms of life and many important evolutionary processes. Hybridization and lateral gene transfer are two of these processes, and they occur frequently, with important outcomes in all domains of life. Eukaryotes appear to have a more tree-like history because successful lateral events (...) tend to occur among more closely related species, or at a lower frequency, than in prokaryotes, but this is a difference of degree rather than kind. Although the tree of life is especially problematic as a representation of the evolutionary history of prokaryotes, it can function more generally as an illustration of the limitations of a standard evolutionary perspective. Moreover, for philosophers, questions about the tree of life can be applied to the Mayrian inheritance in philosophy of biology. These questions make clear that the dichotomy of life Mayr suggested is based on too narrow a perspective. An alternative to this dichotomy is a multidimensional continuum in which different strategies of genetic exchange bestow greater adaptiveness and evolvability on prokaryotes and eukaryotes. (shrink)

The study of ancient DNA has gained increasing attention in science and society as a tool for tracing hominin evolution. While aDNA research overlaps with the history of population genetics, it embodies a specific configuration of technology, temporality, temperature, and place that, this article suggests, cannot be fully unpacked with existing science and technology studies approaches to population genetics. This article explores this configuration through the 2010 discovery of the Denisovan hominin based on aDNA retrieved from a finger bone and (...) tooth in Siberia. The analysis explores how the Denisovan was enacted as a technoscientific object through the cool and even temperatures of Denisova Cave, assumptions about the connection between individual and population, the status of populations as evolutionary entities, and underlying colonialist and imperialist imaginaries of Siberia and Melanesia. The analysis sheds light on how aDNA research is changing the parameters within which evolutionary history is imagined and conceptualized. Through the case study, it also outlines some ways in which the specific technoscientific and cultural entanglements of aDNA can be critically explored. (shrink)

Recent ‘new materialist’ readings of evolution by such feminists as Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Luciana Parisi, Susan Oyama and Myra Hird have provided important insights on the openness of evolutionary processes and the emergence of difference by focusing on evolution as a temporal dynamic. Building on Darwin's observations on geographical variation, this article highlights the importance of viewing evolution as not only temporal but also spatial. For this purpose, the article turns to population genetics and its practice of mapping the (...) early human diaspora. The article identifies a spatiotemporal dynamic of evolutionary emergence that posits gender, sexuality and race as ontologically mutually constitutive, as well as shows that such ontology is inseparable from the techniques and technologies that study it. The article argues that this mutual embeddedness of ontology and epistemology provides a site where both the limits and potential of evolutionary emergence may be examined and negotiated. (shrink)

In this model consciousness is a form of memory. We are essentially “living in the past” as our experience, the qualia, is always of past events. Consciousness represents the storage of past events for use in future situations and it is altered by external experience of the organism. Psychological frameworks of conditioning and learning theory are used to explain this model along with recent neuropsychological research on synaesthesia and phantom limb pain. Consciousness results from the gradual evolutionary development of the (...) human information processing function. Language is hypothesised to have evolved at a pre-conscious stage of human development as a function of the need for ‘within-organism’ data storage. Communication with others may not have been the initial evolutionary advantage conferred by language. The later incidental use of language as a communication tool, which results in the reflecting back of one’s experience through others, is what has triggered a conscious experience. (shrink)

“The Role of the Individual in Evolution” is a prescient yet neglected 1941 work by the 20th century’s most important paleontologist, George Gaylord Simpson. In a curious intermingling of explanation and critique, Simpson engages questions that would become increasingly fundamental in modern biological theory and philosophy. Did individuality, adaptation, and evolutionary causation reside at more than one level: the cell, the organism, the genetically coherent reproductive group, the social group, or some combination thereof? What was an individual, anyway? In this (...) introduction, we highlight two points in a wider historical context. First, recognizing the political context of Simpson’s writing profoundly deepens our understanding of the development of his science as the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis infused biology. Second, this story illuminates the emergence of debates around what would eventually come to be called multilevel selection theory. The organism-centered concept of biological individuality defended by Simpson is situated in relation to the then-emerging Synthesis, in which he was a renowned player, and also in relation to the views he opposed: the “metaphysical” ideas of paleontologists such as Henry Fairfield Osborn, who claimed that some evolutionary trends derived from potentialities already implanted in the germplasm; and the organicist ideas of Ralph W. Gerard and the Chicago School of ecologists, which he derided as all too congenial to totalitarianism. We find parallels between the ways that Simpson thought then about human individuality under totalitarianism and the way he thought about individuality in evolution; not that any causal relationship linked the two, but that commonalities of hierarchical structure exist between single entities and groups in both instances. We then trace the subsequent development of Simpson’s political and philosophical takes on the role of the individual in evolution through the 1960s and lightly sketch out the later fate of the organicist ideas of the Chicago School. Simpson’s paper, originally published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article, as part of the "Classics in Biological Theory" collection. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between moral schemas and corruption in public procurement. It adopts a moral schema framework to examine procurement-induced corruption from Uganda. Experiences, attitudes, and values of respondents are used to construct future behavior of public procurement staff. The schema framework was built around the premise that procurement-related corruption is a function of the social framework and human nature paradox, constructing logical justification for the acts of corruption. The study uses data from 474 public procurement staff to (...) demonstrate that social identity, ethical egoistic, legislative, amoral, and religious moral schemas account for 78.51% of the variance in moral schema of respondents. All these schemas were found to be significant predictors, accounting for 73.3% of public procurement corruption. The paper urges managers of procuring and disposing entities to utilize moral scripts in reducing corruption. Managers are encouraged to engage in morally responsible behaviors to promote ethics and value-for-money transactions. The paper provides an alternative framework for examining corruption in sub-Saharan Africa where explicit elaboration of insights on corruption is still lacking. (shrink)

ArgumentThe spread of Darwinian ideas by the late nineteenth century in Argentina transformed the intellectual elites' notion of progress and civilization. While before Darwin, union, harmony, and assimilation were the ideas most commonly associated with the civilizatory process; variation, struggle, and divergence dominated the post-Darwin discussion. More importantly, unlike in Europe, in Argentina the theory not only triggered interest in the process of speciation, but also its relationship with extinction. Extinction became the benchmark of progress, and the sign of success (...) for the nation. If the country was civilizing itself, the “natural” elimination of inferior individuals, unfit for the struggle for existence, had to be proved and displayed. The origin of modernity was here associated with the existence of evolutionary waste that revealed the work of natural selection on behalf of national improvement. (shrink)

In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, Darwin used the metaphor of the architect to argue in favor of natural autonomy and to clarify the role of chance in his theory of adaptive change by variation and natural selection. In this article, I trace the history of this important heuristic instrument in Darwin's writings and letters and suggest that this metaphor was important to Darwin because it helps him to explain the role of chance, and (...) gives an argument in favor of the free will. (shrink)

An important historical relation that has hardly been addressed is the influence of Prosper Lucas's Treatise on Natural Inheritance on the development of Charles Darwin's concepts related to inheritance. In this article we trace this historical connection. Darwin read Lucas's Treatise in 1856. His reading coincided with many changes concerning his prior ideas on the transmission and expression of characters. We consider that this reading led him to propose a group of principles regarding prepotency, hereditary diseases, morbid tendencies and atavism; (...) following Lucas, he called these principles: laws of inheritance. (shrink)

The representation of a complex but stable, self-regulated and, finally, harmonious nature penetrates the whole history of Ecology, thus contradicting the core of the Darwinian evolution. Originated in the pre-Darwinian Natural History, this representation defined theoretically the various schools of early ecology and, in the context of the cybernetic synthesis of the 1950s, it assumed a typical mathematical form on account of α positive correlation between species diversity and community stability. After 1960, these two aforementioned concepts and their positive correlation (...) were proposed as environmental management tools, in the face of the ecological crisis arising at the time. In the early 1970s, and particularly after May’s evolutionary arguments, the consensus around this positive correlation collapsed for a while, only to be promptly restored for the purpose of attaching an ecological value on biodiversity. In this paper, we explore the history of the diversity–stability hypothesis and we review the successive terms that have been used to express community stability. We argue that this hypothesis has been motivated by the nodal ideological presuppositions of order and harmony and that the scientific developments in this field largely correspond to external social pressures. We conclude that the conflict about the diversity–stability relationship is in fact an ideological debate, referring mostly to the way we see nature and society rather than to an autonomous scientific question. From this point of view, we may understand why Ecology’s concepts and perceptions may decline and return again and again, forming a pluralistic scientific history. (shrink)

In the present Western cultural and political context, the concept of nature plays a central role in the debate about new technologies. However, the concept of nature is complex and reflects more than one frame of reference stemming from a long historical tradition. ‘Nature’ is referred to: a) as the object (phenomenon) toward which the debate is directed, and b) as the normative frame of reference that either justifies or rejects the technological method in specific situations. This paper argues, that (...) this double character of ‘nature’ is not particular for the debate on ethical concern for the non-human nature, rather it constitutes the complexity of the concept itself. This, in turn, leads to a more fundamental question, namely: What is ‘nature’?—Or rather: Is ‘nature’ to be defined? (shrink)

William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist at Johns Hopkins University from 1876 until his death in 1908. Over the course of his career, Brooks staunchly defended Darwinism, arguing for the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary theory at a time when alternative theories, such as neo-Lamarckism, grew prominent in American biology. In his book The Law of Heredity, Brooks addressed problems raised by Darwin’s theory of pangenesis. In modifying and developing Darwin’s pangenesis, Brooks proposed a new theory of heredity (...) that sought to avoid the pitfalls of Darwin’s hypothesis. In so doing he strengthened Darwin’s theory of natural selection by undermining arguments for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In later attacks on neo-Lamarckism, Brooks consistently defended Darwin’s theory of natural selection on logical grounds, continued to challenge the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and argued that natural selection best explained a wide range of adaptations. Finally, he critiqued Galton’s statistical view of heredity and argued that Galton had resurrected an outmoded typological concept of species, one which Darwin and other naturalists had shown to be incorrect. Brooks’s ideas resemble the “biological species concept” of the twentieth century, as developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and others. The late-nineteenth century was not a period of total “eclipse” of Darwinism, as biologists and historians have hitherto seen it. Although the “Modern Synthesis” refers to the reconciliation of post-Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection, we might adjust our understanding of how the synthesis developed by seeing it as the culmination of a longer discussion that extends back to the late-nineteenth century. (shrink)

This paper argues for two related theses. The first is that mathematical abstraction can play an important role in shaping the way we think about and hence understand certain phenomena, an enterprise that extends well beyond simply representing those phenomena for the purpose of calculating/predicting their behaviour. The second is that much of our contemporary understanding and interpretation of natural selection has resulted from the way it has been described in the context of statistics and mathematics. I argue for these (...) claims by tracing attempts to understand the basis of natural selection from its early formulation as a statistical theory to its later development by R.A. Fisher, one of the founders of modern population genetics. Not only did these developments put natural selection of a firm theoretical foundation but its mathematization changed the way it was understood as a biological process. Instead of simply clarifying its status, mathematical techniques were responsible for redefining or reconceptualising selection. As a corollary I show how a highly idealised mathematical law that seemingly fails to describe any concrete system can nevertheless contain a great deal of accurate information that can enhance our understanding far beyond simply predictive capabilities. (shrink)

The biogeographic contributions of Léon Croizat (1894–1982) and the conflictive relationships with his intellectual descendants and critics are analysed. Croizat’s panbiogeography assumed that vicariance is the most important biogeographic process and that dispersal does not contribute to biogeographic patterns. Dispersalist biogeographers criticized or avoided mentioning panbiogeography, especially in the context of the “hardening” of the Modern Synthesis. Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History associated panbiogeography with Hennig’s phylogenetic systematics, creating cladistic biogeography. On the other hand, a group of (...) New Zealand biologists formalized Croizat’s original concepts and soon began arguing with cladistic biogeographers over the relative merits of their approaches. In Latin America, panbiogeography and cladistic biogeography were incorporated as parts of an integrative approach. A recent development, molecular panbiogeography, is based on the use of molecular phylogenetic data. The current practice shows that some authors insist on considering panbiogeography as the only appropriate approach and vicariance as the only relevant process, whereas others accept Croizat’s dictum “Earth and life evolve together” as a useful guide to understanding broad, general patterns, but recognize that dispersal also contributes substantially to biotic assembly. The framework of integrative pluralism allows to explain the complexities of the biogeographic processes involved in biotic assembly without the need of unification on a large scale. This historical analysis intersects with the existing historiography of the Modern Synthesis and may provide some insights on the dynamics of integrative pluralism, which may be especially relevant in the current development of the Extended Synthesis. (shrink)

Recent discoveries of geographical patterns in microbial distribution are undermining microbiology’s exclusively ecological explanations of biogeography and their fundamental assumption that ‘everything is everywhere: but the environment selects’. This statement was generally promulgated by Dutch microbiologist Martinus Wilhelm Beijerinck early in the twentieth century and specifically articulated in 1934 by his compatriot, Lourens G. M. Baas Becking. The persistence of this precept throughout twentieth-century microbiology raises a number of issues in relation to its formulation and widespread acceptance. This paper will (...) trace the conceptual history of Beijerinck’s claim that ‘everything is everywhere’ in relation to a more general account of its theoretical, experimental and institutional context. His principle also needs to be situated in relationship to plant and animal biogeography, which, this paper will argue, forms a continuum of thought with microbial biogeography. Finally, a brief overview of the contemporary microbiological research challenging ‘everything is everywhere’ reveals that philosophical issues from Beijerinck’s era of microbiology still provoke intense discussion in twenty-first century investigations of microbial biogeography. (shrink)

" The best way to predict the future is to invent it. —Alan Kay _1_ It is obvious that there are patterns of cultural change—evolution in the neutral sense—and any theory of cultural change worth more than a moment's consideration will have to be Darwinian in the minimal sense of being consistent with the theory of evolution by natural selection of Homo sapiens. —Daniel Dennett _2_ The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet. —William Gibson _3_ It is (...) the magician's wand, by means of which he may summon into life whatever form and mould he pleases. —Charles Darwin commenting on the power of artificial selection _4_ " This article introduces an applied Theory of Evolution of Artificial Systems, called Directed Evolution. The theory is grounded in fifty years of research on Inventive Engineering known as TRIZ, which started in the former Soviet Union by G. Altshuller and continues today. The theory has generated a set of Patterns and Lines of Evolution that represent a compilation of trends that document strong, historically recurring tendencies in the development of manmade systems in general and technological systems in particular. Directed Evolution is the systematic applied-oriented process for “predicting” future generations of a system by inventing them along these evolutionary patterns. The current article introduces the theory, reflects on its basic underlying logic, and provides a broad historical context and intellectual justification for such an effort. It shows that the quest of DE theory and practice falls well within the boundaries of past pursuits to identify evolutionary patterns of complex systems and to use these patterns to control and manipulate possible futures of artificial systems. (shrink)

C. J. Temminck, director of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie (now the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden) and a renowned ornithologist, gained his contemporary's respect thanks to the description of many new species and to his detailed monographs on birds. He also published a small number of works on biogeography describing the fauna of the Dutch colonies in South East Asia and Japan. These works are remarkable for two reasons. First, in them Temminck accurately described the species composition (...) of poorly explored regions, like the Sunda Islands and Japan. Secondly, he formulated a new law on the geographical distribution of animals around the globe, based on the parallels he observed between the fauna from Europe, Asia and Japan. The underlying ideas that lead Temminck to this law were the typeconcept, which he understood as the ideal morphological plan behind animal form, the unchanging character of the species and a strong belief in nature's divine design. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the type-and the species-concept, the origin and fixity of the species and the meaning of variations aroused heated discussions. When put in the context of his time, Temminck emerges as a scientist whose work was driven by the dominating scientific philosophy of the time in which he lived, under the influence of late eighteenth century natural history and of French empiricists, in particular, the great zoologist and paleontologist Georges Cuvier. Temminck's detailed descriptions of the Dutch East Indian fauna helped the great naturalists after him to understand nature's patterns and to propose comprehensive theories that explain its diversity. (shrink)

Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6 Authors Erika L. Milam, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA Roberta L. Millstein, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA Angela Potochnik, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA Joan E. Roughgarden, Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

Many philosophers have become familiar with Leopold’s land ethic through the writings of J. Baird Callicott, who claims that Leopold bases his land ethic on a ‘protosociobiological’ argument that Darwin gives in the Descent of Man. On this view, which has become the canonical interpretation, Leopold’s land ethic is based on extending our moral sentiments to ecosystems. I argue that the evidence weighs in favor of an alternative interpretation of Leopold; his reference to Darwin does not refer to the Descent, (...) but rather to the Origin of Species, where Darwin discusses the interdependencies between organisms in the struggle for existence. (shrink)

I examine the use of the term function in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, invoked as (1) the healthy functioning of the land community, which is dependent on (2) the maintenance of the characteristic functions of populations that are parts of the land community. The latter can be understood as referring to interactions between species that are the products of coevolution (such as parasite-host, predator-prey) and, thus, in terms of the “selected effect” account of function. The performance of these functions under (...) certain conditions maintain what Leopold took to be the healthy functioning of a land community. (shrink)

In Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore contend that “Darwin would put his utmost into sexual selection because the subject intrigued him, no doubt, but also for a deeper reason: the theory vindicated his lifelong commitment to human brotherhood”. Without questioning Desmond and Moore’s evidence, I will raise some puzzles for their view. I will show that attention to the structure of Darwin’s arguments in the Descent of Man shows that they are far from straightforward. As Desmond and (...) Moore note, Darwin seems to have intended sexual selection in non-human animals to serve as evidence for sexual selection in humans. However, Darwin’s account of sexual selection in humans was different from the canonical cases that Darwin described at great length. If explaining the origin of human races was the main reason for introducing sexual selection, and if sexual selection was a key piece of Darwin’s anti-slavery arguments, then it is puzzling why Darwin would have spent so much time discussing cases that did not really support his argument for the origin of human races, and it is also puzzling that his argument for the origin of human races would be so poor. (shrink)

This paper explores the values and practices of capitalism and speculates about how they might evolve as twenty-first century global capitalism comes into being. The values embodied by the Westernized canon we have inherited might account for certain shortcomings of capitalism. As economic power shifts away from dominant markets of the recent past, our search for the canon of twenty-first century global capitalism can help shape the values we aspire for our capitalism of the future to embody and to enable.

Julian Huxley’s eclipse of Darwinism narrative has cast a long shadow over the historiography of evolutionary theory around the turn of the nineteenth century. It has done so by limiting who could be thought of as Darwinian. Peter Bowler used the eclipse to draw attention to previously understudied alternatives to Darwinism, but maintained the same flaw. In his research on the Non-Darwinian Revolution, he extended this problematic element even further back in time. This paper explores how late nineteenth-century neo-Darwinian conceptualizations (...) of Darwinism were later utilized by several advocates and detractors of the Modern Synthesis. John Beatty has shown how this continuity hinges at least partly on the perceived importance of the creativity of natural selection. The paper provides a more thorough look at Darwin’s two conflicting accounts of variation, ascribed to struggles in explaining quantitative versus qualitative characters. In doing so, it suggests that other forms of Darwinism persisted, in both the non-Darwinian revolution and eclipse periods, because of tension between contingency and creativity in Darwin’s own work. This tension is traced out from Darwin’s conceptions of variation into the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, Hugo de Vries, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Based on this, the eclipse narrative is criticized for not considering the meaning of Darwinism in different geographical locations. Britain and the United States showed few signs of an eclipse. Rather, the rise of German debates about Haeckel’s vision of Darwinism have been mistaken for a universal decline in support. (shrink)