John S. Wilkins

How to be a chaste species pluralist-realist: the origins of species modes and the synapomorphic species concept

The biological species (biospecies) concept applies only to sexually reproducing species, which means that until sexual reproduction evolved, there were no biospecies. On the universal tree of life, biospecies concepts therefore apply only to a relatively small number of clades, notably plants andanimals. I argue that it is useful to treat the various ways of being a species (species modes) as traits of clades. By extension from biospecies to the other concepts intended to capture the natural realities of what keeps taxa distinct, we can treat other modes as traits also, and so come to understand that theplurality of species concepts reflects the biological realities of monophyletic groups.We should expect that specialists in different organisms will tend to favour those concepts that best represent the intrinsic mechanisms that keep taxa distinct in their clades. I will address the question whether modes ofreproduction such as asexual and sexual reproduction are natural classes, given that they are paraphyletic in most clades.

The Appearance of Lamarckism in the Evolution of Culture

Darwinism and Evolutionary Economics brings together contributions from eminent authors who, building on Darwin’s own insights and on developments in evolutionary theory, offer challenging views on how economics can use evolutionary ideas effectively.

The Evolutionary Structure of Scientific Theories

David Hulls (1988c) model of science as a selection process suffers from a two-fold inability: (a) to ascertain when a lineage of theories has been established; i.e., when theories are descendants of older theories or are novelties, and what counts as a distinct lineage; and (b) to specify what the scientific analogue is of genotype and phenotype. This paper seeks to clarify these issues and to propose an abstract model of theories analogous to particulate genetic structure, in order to reconstruct relationships of descent and identity.

Nature and Classification

In this chapter we introduce the notion of a natural classification and the role classification plays in sciences. We consider the difference between taxonomy and systematics, and introduce the question of theory-dependence of observation. The philosophical background of classification is introduced, along with the question of essentialism and natural kinds, which we replace in classification with the method of types.

Tower of Babel: The evidence against the new creationism

Book Information Tower of Babel: the evidence against the new creationism. By Robert T. Pennock. Bradford/MIT Press. Cambridge MA. 1999. Pp. xviii + 429.

Why Do Believers Believe Silly Things? Costly Signaling and the Function of Denialism

People (and not merely religious people) often have beliefs that are widely regarded as silly by the experts or by the general population. This leads us to ask why believers believe silly things if they are widely thought to be silly, and then why believers believe the specific things they do. I propose that silly beliefs function as in-group and out-group tribal markers. Such markers act as an honest costly signal; honest and costly because such beliefs are hard to fake. Then I offer a developmentalist account of belief formation, in which beliefs are seen to be the result of a process of acquiring beliefs as cheaply and effectively as possible, leading to a reluctance to abandon early core beliefs later in life. Then I consider whether beliefs even can form a unified worldview, and ask how conversion occurs within the developmental characterization I propose. Finally, I consider how this may play out in terms of crises of faith.

Philosophy of Biology, by Peter Godfrey-Smith

implicit politics of philosophy. What is it to insist that criticism be ‘constructive’? Is clarity always valuable? Is consistency always important? Geuss puts into question the values of ‘professional philosophy’: its endless lawyerly arguments; its minutemen patrolling the disciplinary boundaries and enforcing what constitutes ‘good scholarship’, a ‘professional tone’, and ‘respectful engagement with the arguments’; its insistence on the priority of certain questions over others, and its knowingness about what constitutes an acceptable answer to those questions. The essays approach this project not directly (by offering yet another abstract theory, yet more ‘refutations’), but obliquely. Geuss seeks to undermine the apparently self-evident importance and unity of various key concepts (especially in ethics and politics). Through genealogies of these concepts, through the way in which the collection juxtaposes things not normally brought together, through parody and caricature, the cumulative effect of the essays is to distance us from, and hence to make strange, the overly familiar. The result is to make the old projects and old questions seem unmotivated, boring—even bizarre. A World Without Why is an invitation to see things anew: to see what philosophy could be, if it relinquished the project of rationalising the real. Not all will want to accept the invitation, but there is no doubt that this book further affirms Geuss as one of the most interesting voices in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy.

Worth the Knowing

What classifications contribute to the inferential process in science is that they allow us to locate the mass of data points observed without Theory in a broader pattern, and they guide Theory-building. Classification is not, in and of itself, Theory-building; nor is it free of Theory when Theory is available. However, if we have no Theory, or the Theory is contested, then we should recognize that a classification scheme is a statement of what we do know, and rest easy in our ignorance of what we do not.

Homology and Analogy

In this chapter, we consider what homologies and analogies are, in biology and other contexts. A homology is a relation from one set of objects or parts to another, a relation of identity no matter what differences of appearance or function exist in the parts or objects. Similarity relations are arbitrary, while homological relations are not. Homological relations are inductively projectible, based on consensuses of topographical agreement over time (causes) and space (forms). In biology, phylogenetic classifications are partial solutions to Goodman’s grue paradox, since homologies are the right dependence relations to make inferences from. This is why, although the evolution of species is somewhat gruesome, we can make ampliative inferences about organisms. We finish with a discussion of Sober’s “modus Darwin” being based on convergences (analogies) rather than the homologies (affinities) Darwin actually employed.

The Nature of Science

In this chapter we describe a way to conceptualize science as a field of possibilities from active conceptualization (theorization) to passive conceptualization (classification), and from active observation (experiment) to passive observation (pattern recognition of phenomena), setting up the scene for later chapters.