20 found
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  1. Fitness, probability and the principles of natural selection.Frederic Bouchard & Alexander Rosenberg - 2004 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55 (4):693-712.
    We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation (...)
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  2. Causal processes, fitness, and the differential persistence of lineages.Frédéric Bouchard - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):560-570.
    Ecological fitness has been suggested to provide a unifying definition of fitness. However, a metric for this notion of fitness was in most cases unavailable except by proxy with differential reproductive success. In this article, I show how differential persistence of lineages can be used as a way to assess ecological fitness. This view is inspired by a better understanding of the evolution of some clonal plants, colonial organisms, and ecosystems. Differential persistence shows the limitation of an ensemblist noncausal understanding (...)
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  3. A persistence enhancing propensity account of ecological function to explain ecosystem evolution.Antoine C. Dussault & Frédéric Bouchard - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4).
    We argue that ecology in general and biodiversity and ecosystem function research in particular need an understanding of functions which is both ahistorical and evolutionarily grounded. A natural candidate in this context is Bigelow and Pargetter’s evolutionary forward-looking account which, like the causal role account, assigns functions to parts of integrated systems regardless of their past history, but supplements this with an evolutionary dimension that relates functions to their bearers’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves. While Bigelow and Pargetter’s account (...)
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  4. Darwinism without populations: a more inclusive understanding of the “Survival of the Fittest”.Frédéric Bouchard - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1):106-114.
    Following Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer’s expression “survival of the fittest”. Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term ‘fitness’ is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive success throughout (...)
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  5. Ecosystem Evolution is About Variation and Persistence, not Populations and Reproduction.Frédéric Bouchard - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (4):382-391.
    Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators and (...)
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  6. Symbiosis, lateral function transfer and the (many) saplings of life.Frédéric Bouchard - 2010 - Biology and Philosophy 25 (4):623-641.
    One of intuitions driving the acceptance of a neat structured tree of life is the assumption that organisms and the lineages they form have somewhat stable spatial and temporal boundaries. The phenomenon of symbiosis shows us that such ‘fixist’ assumptions does not correspond to how the natural world actually works. The implications of lateral gene transfer (LGT) have been discussed elsewhere; I wish to stress a related point. I will focus on lateral function transfer (LFT) and will argue, using examples (...)
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  7.  56
    How ecosystem evolution strengthens the case for functional pluralism.Frédéric Bouchard - 2013 - In Philippe Huneman (ed.), Functions: selection and mechanisms. Springer. pp. 83--95.
  8. Understanding colonial traits using symbiosis research and ecosystem ecology.Frédéric Bouchard - 2009 - Biological Theory 4 (3):240-246.
    E. O. Wilson (1974: 54) describes the problem that social organisms pose: “On what bases do we distinguish the extremely modified members of an invertebrate colony from the organs of a metazoan animal?” This framing of the issue has inspired many to look more closely at how groups of organisms form and behave as emergent individuals. The possible existence of “superorganisms” test our best intuitions about what can count and act as genuine biological individuals and how we should study them. (...)
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  9. The Roles of Institutional Trust and Distrust in Grounding Rational Deference to Scientific Expertise.Frédéric Bouchard - 2016 - Perspectives on Science 24 (5):582-608.
    Given the complexity of most phenomena, we have to delegate much epistemic work to other knowers and we must find reasons for relying on these specific knowers and not others. In our societies, these other knowers are often called experts and we rely on their epistemic authority more and more. For many complex phenomena such as climate change, genetically modified crops, and immunization, the experts that are called upon are scientific experts. For that reason, finding good reasons and justification for (...)
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  10. Fitness.Frédéric Bouchard - 2005 - In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 310--315.
  11.  45
    The Epistemic Revolution Induced by Microbiome Studies: An Interdisciplinary View.Eric Bapteste, Philippe Gerard, Catherine Larose, Manuel Blouin, Fabrice Not, Liliane Campos, Géraldine Aïdan, M. André Selosse, M. Sarah Adénis, Frédéric Bouchard, Sébastien Dutreuil, Eduardo Corel, Chloé Vigliotti, Philippe Huneman, F. Joseph Lapointe & Philippe Lopez - 2021 - Biology 10.
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  12. Functional diversity: An epistemic roadmap.Christophe Malaterre, Antoine C. Dussault, Sophia Rousseau-Mermans, Gillian Barker, Beatrix E. Beisner, Frédéric Bouchard, Eric Desjardins, Tanya I. Handa, Steven W. Kembel, Geneviève Lajoie, Virginie Maris, Alison D. Munson, Jay Odenbaugh, Timothée Poisot, B. Jesse Shapiro & Curtis A. Suttle - 2019 - BioScience 10 (69):800-811.
    Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...)
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  13.  14
    Philosophy and Evolution: Minding the Gap Between Evolutionary Patterns and Tree-Like Patterns.Eric Bapteste, Frederic Bouchard & Richard M. Burian - 2012 - In M. Anisimova (ed.), Evolutionary Genomics. Methods in Molecular Biology.
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  14. Épistémologie.Alexandre Guay & Frédéric Bouchard - 2015 - In J. Prud’Homme, P. Doray & F. Bouchard (eds.), Sciences, technologies et sociétés de A à Z. [Montréal, Québec]: Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal. pp. 85-87.
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  15.  59
    Session 4: Evolutionary indeterminism.Robert Brandon, Alan Love, Paul Griffths & Frederic Bouchard - manuscript
    Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Workshop in History and Philosophy of Biology, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, March 23-24 2001 Session 4: Evolutionary Indeterminism.
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  16.  31
    Des fourmis et des hommes : examen des prémisses darwiniennes dans la pensée de Benoît Dubreuil. Benoît Dubreuil, Human Evolution and the Origins of HierarchiesBenoît Dubreuil, Human Evolution and the Origins of Hierarchies.Frédéric Bouchard - 2012 - Philosophiques 39 (1):265-270.
  17.  38
    Rationalité et néo-darwinisme: l'origine de la pensée selon de Sousa.Frédéric Bouchard - 2007 - Dialogue 46 (1):155-163.
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  18.  7
    Précis de Philosophie de la biologie [Handbook Philosophy of Biology].Eric Bapteste, Thierry Hoquet, Anouk Barberousse, Francesca Merlin, Frédéric Bouchard & Vincent Devictor (eds.) - 2014 - Vuibert Press.
    La philosophie de la biologie est un domaine extrêmement actif de la recherche dans la tradition philosophique anglo-saxonne. Elle réunit philosophes et biologistes autour de la question de la définition des concepts fondamentaux : gène, cellule, organisme, espèce, développement, évolution, adaptation, etc. Ce livre, qui rassemble les contributions d’une trentaine de spécialistes français et étrangers, présente en 24 chapitres l’état de la recherche actuelle dans tous les principaux domaines de la biologie. Il peut être utilisé comme manuel pour les cours (...)
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  19. Matthen and Ariew’s Obituary for Fitness: Reports of its Death have been Greatly Exaggerated. [REVIEW]Alexander Rosenberg & Frederic Bouchard - 2005 - Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):343-353.
    Philosophers of biology have been absorbed by the problem of defining evolutionary fitness since Darwin made it central to biological explanation. The apparent problem is obvious. Define fitness as some biologists implicitly do, in terms of actual survival and reproduction, and the principle of natural selection turns into an empty tautology: those organisms which survive and reproduce in larger numbers, survive and reproduce in larger numbers. Accordingly, many writers have sought to provide a definition for ‘fitness’ which avoid this outcome. (...)
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  20.  33
    (1 other version)Elisabeth A. Lloyd. Science, Politics, and Evolution. 301 pp., index. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. $85. [REVIEW]Frédéric Bouchard - 2009 - Isis 100 (2):444-445.
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