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368Plasticity genes: what are they, and why should we care?In H. Greppin, R. Degli Agosti & C. Penel (eds.), The Co-Action Between Living Systems and the Planet, University of Geneva. 1998.A critical examination of the dispute about the existence and significance of "plasticity genes."
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952From molecules to phenotypes? The promise and limits of integrative biologyBasic and Applied Ecology 4 297-306. 2003.Is integrative biology a good idea, or even possible? There has been much interest lately in the unifica- tion of biology and the integration of traditionally separate disciplines such as molecular and develop- mental biology on one hand, and ecology and evolutionary biology on the other. In this paper I ask if and under what circumstances such integration of efforts actually makes sense. I develop by example an analogy with Aristotle’s famous four “causes” that one can investigate concerning an…Read more
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31Lindsay Craig—The So-Called Extended Synthesis and Population Genetics : Extended Synthesis: Theory Expansion or Alternative?Biological Theory 5 (3): 275-276. 2010.
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825Biology's last paradigm shift. The transition from natural theology to DarwinismParadigmi 2012 (3): 45-58. 2012.The theory of evolution, which provides the conceptual framework for all modern research in organismal biology and informs research in molecular bi- ology, has gone through several stages of expansion and refinement. Darwin and Wallace (1858) of course proposed the original idea, centering on the twin concepts of natural selection and common descent. Shortly thereafter, Wallace and August Weismann worked toward the complete elimination of any Lamarckian vestiges from the theory, leaning in parti…Read more
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953Genes `for' phenotypes: A modern history viewBiology and Philosophy 16 (2): 189--213. 2001.We attempt to improve the understanding of the notion of agene being `for a phenotypic trait or traits. Considering theimplicit functional ascription of one thing being `for another,we submit a more restrictive version of `gene for talk.Accordingly, genes are only to be thought of as being forphenotypic traits when good evidence is available that thepresence or prevalence of the gene in a population is the resultof natural selection on that particular trait, and that theassociation between that …Read more
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1017Sewall Wright’s adaptive landscapes: 1932 vs. 1988Biology and Philosophy 23 (5): 591-603. 2008.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 …Read more
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3034The mismeasure of machine: Synthetic biology and the trouble with engineering metaphorsStudies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (4): 660-668. 2013.The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their func- tionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adapta- tions, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimalit…Read more
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1671When Science Studies Religion: Six Philosophy Lessons for Science ClassesScience & Education 22 (1): 49-67. 2013.It is an unfortunate fact of academic life that there is a sharp divide between science and philosophy, with scientists often being openly dismissive of philosophy, and philosophers being equally contemptuous of the naivete ́ of scientists when it comes to the philosophical underpinnings of their own discipline. In this paper I explore the possibility of reducing the distance between the two sides by introducing science students to some interesting philosophical aspects of research in evolutiona…Read more
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3367Species as family resemblance concepts: the (dis-)solution of the species problem?Bioessays 25 (6): 596-602. 2003.The so-called ‘‘species problem’’ has plagued evolution- ary biology since before Darwin’s publication of the aptly titled Origin of Species. Many biologists think the problem is just a matter of semantics; others complain that it will not be solved until we have more empirical data. Yet, we don’t seem to be able to escape discussing it and teaching seminars about it. In this paper, I briefly examine the main themes of the biological and philosophical liter- atures on the species problem, focusi…Read more
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81Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary TheoryUniversity of Chicago Press. 2006.Making Sense of Evolution explores contemporary evolutionary biology, focusing on the elements of theories—selection, adaptation, and species—that are complex and open to multiple possible interpretations, many of which are incompatible with one another and with other accepted practices in the discipline. Particular experimental methods, for example, may demand one understanding of “selection,” while the application of the same concept to another area of evolutionary biology could necessitate a …Read more
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600On the limits of quantitative genetics for the study of phenotypic evolutionActa Biotheoretica 45 (2): 143-160. 1997.During the last two decades the role of quantitative genetics in evolutionary theory has expanded considerably. Quantitative genetic-based models addressing long term phenotypic evolution, evolution in multiple environments (phenotypic plasticity) and evolution of ontogenies (developmental trajectories) have been proposed. Yet, the mathematical foundations of quantitative genetics were laid with a very different set of problems in mind (mostly the prediction of short term responses to artificial…Read more
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2590Do we need an extended evolutionary synthesis?Evolution 61 (12): 2743-2749. 2007.The Modern Synthesis (MS) is the current paradigm in evolutionary biology. It was actually built by expanding on the conceptual foundations laid out by its predecessors, Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. For sometime now there has been talk of a new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), and this article begins to outline why we may need such an extension, and how it may come about. As philosopher Karl Popper has noticed, the current evolutionary theory is a theory of genes, and we still lack a theor…Read more
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1876The proximate–ultimate distinction and evolutionary developmental biology: causal irrelevance versus explanatory abstractionBiology and Philosophy 30 (5): 653-670. 2015.Mayr’s proximate–ultimate distinction has received renewed interest in recent years. Here we discuss its role in arguments about the relevance of developmental to evolutionary biology. We show that two recent critiques of the proximate–ultimate distinction fail to explain why developmental processes in particular should be of interest to evolutionary biologists. We trace these failures to a common problem: both critiques take the proximate–ultimate distinction to neglect specific causal interact…Read more
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5321An Extended Synthesis for Evolutionary BiologyAnnals of the New York Academy of Science 1168 218-228. 2009.Evolutionary theory is undergoing an intense period of discussion and reevaluation. This, contrary to the misleading claims of creationists and other pseudoscientists, is no harbinger of a crisis but rather the opposite: the field is expanding dramatically in terms of both empirical discoveries and new ideas. In this essay I briefly trace the conceptual history of evolutionary theory from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism, and from the Modern Synthesis to what I refer to as the Extended Synthesis, a mo…Read more
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108Why Do Irrational Beliefs Mimic Science? The Cultural Evolution of PseudoscienceTheoria 83 (1): 78-97. 2016.Why do irrational beliefs adopt the trappings of science, to become what is known as “pseudoscience”? Here, we develop and extend an epidemiological framework to map the factors that explain the form and the popularity of irrational beliefs in scientific garb. These factors include the exploitation of epistemic vigilance, the misunderstanding of the authority of science, the use of the honorific title of “science” as an explicit argument for belief, and the phenomenon of epistemic negligence. We…Read more
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984The Nature of Evolutionary Biology: At the Borderlands Between Historical and Experimental ScienceIn Kostas Kampourakis (ed.), The Philosophy of Biology: A Companion for Educators, Springer. 2013.The scientific status of evolutionary theory seems to be more or less perennially under question. I am not referring here (just) to the silliness of young Earth creation- ism (Pigliucci 2002; Boudry and Braeckman 2010), or even of the barely more intel- lectually sophisticated so-called Intelligent Design theory (Recker 2010; Brigandt this volume), but rather to discussions among scientists and philosophers of science concerning the epistemic status of evolutionary theory (Sober 2010). As we sha…Read more
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883Primates, philosophers and the biological basis of morality: A review of primates and philosophers by Frans de waal, princeton university press, 2006, 200 pp (review)Biology and Philosophy 22 (4): 611-618. 2007.Philosophical inquiries into morality are as old as philosophy, but it may turn out that morality itself is much, much older than that. At least, that is the main thesis of prima- tologist Frans De Waal, who in this short book based on his Tanner Lectures at Princeton, elaborates on what biologists have been hinting at since Darwin’s (1871) book The Descent of Man and Hamilton’s (1963) studies on the evolution of altruism: morality is yet another allegedly human characteristic that turns out to …Read more
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95Phenotypic Integration: Studying the Ecology and Evolution of Complex Phenotypes (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2004.A new voice in the nature-nurture debate can be heard at the interface between evolution and development. Phenotypic integration is a major growth area in research.
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426Foreword to Julian Huxley's "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis"In Massimo Pigliucci & Gerd Müller (eds.), Evolution: The Modern Synthesis The Definitive Edition Edition, Mit Press. pp. 1-8. 2010.A new conceptual essay introducing one of the classics of the evolutionary biological literature.
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4871Mind uploading: a philosophical counter-analysisIn Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick (eds.), Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds, Wiley. pp. 119-130. 2014.A counter analysis of David Chalmers' claims about the possibility of mind uploading within the context of the Singularity event
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19What are we to make of the concept of race?: Thoughts of a philosopher–scientistStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44 (3): 272-277. 2013.Discussions about the biological bases of the concept of race in the human species seem to be never ending. One of the latest rounds is represented by a paper by Neven Sesardic, which attempts to build a strong scientific case for the existence of human races, based on genetic, morphometric and behavioral characteristics, as well as on a thorough critique of opposing positions. In this paper I show that Sesardic’s critique falls far short of the goal, and that his positive case is exceedingly th…Read more
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594Characters and EnvironmentsIn G. P. Wagner (ed.), The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, Academic Press. 2001.The concepts of reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity help us better understand what a biological trait is.
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2256The Fall and Rise of Dr. Pangloss: adaptationism and the Spandrels paper 20 years laterTrends in Ecology and Evolution 15 (2): 66-77. 2000.Twenty years have passed since Gould and Lewontin published their critique of ‘the adaptationist program’ – the tendency of some evolutionary biologists to assume, rather than demonstrate, the operation of natural selection. After the ‘Spandrels paper’, evolutionists were more careful about producing just-so stories based on selection, and paid more attention to a panoply of other processes. Then came reactions against the excesses of the anti-adaptationist movement, which ranged from a complete…Read more
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12648Gould on Morton, Redux: What can the debate reveal about the limits of data?Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 22-31. 2015.Lewis et al. (2011) attempted to restore the reputation of Samuel George Morton, a 19th century physician who reported on the skull sizes of different folk-races. Whereas Gould (1978) claimed that Morton’s conclusions were invalid because they reflected unconscious bias, Lewis et al. alleged that Morton’s findings were, in fact, supported, and Gould’s analysis biased. We take strong exception to Lewis et al.’s thesis that Morton was “right.” We maintain that Gould was right to reject Morton’s an…Read more
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2963Why the Demarcation Problem MattersIn Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, . 2013.Ever since Socrates, philosophers have been in the business of asking ques- tions of the type “What is X?” The point has not always been to actually find out what X is, but rather to explore how we think about X, to bring up to the surface wrong ways of thinking about it, and hopefully in the process to achieve an increasingly better understanding of the matter at hand. In the early part of the twentieth century one of the most ambitious philosophers of sci- ence, Karl Popper, asked that very qu…Read more