Proximate and ultimate causes: how come? and what for? [Book Review]

Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):781-786 (2013)
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Abstract

Proximate and ultimate causes in evolutionary biology have come to conflate two distinctions. The first is a distinction between immediate and historical causes. The second is between explanations of mechanism and adaptive function. Mayr emphasized the first distinction but many evolutionary biologists use proximate and ultimate causes to refer to the second. I recommend that ‘ultimate cause’ be abandoned as ambiguous

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