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24 results in Evolutionary Biology

Page 1 of 2

  • Chapter 6 - Darwin’s theory and the value of mathematical formalization

  • from Part III - The structure of evolutionary theory
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 109-136

  • Summary

    In this chapter the author claim that until Charles Darwin's theory was formalized in the language of mathematics, its implications, predictions, and use in explanations was far from fully realized. Indeed, the confusion and controversies in the six decades following the publication of the Origin illustrate and underscore this point. First, the author set out the theory as Darwin structured and expounded it in the Origin, giving it the axiomatic, albeit informal, rendition that he contend Darwin intended. Second, he examines the early attempts to employ mathematics. The focus is on the underdeveloped elements in Darwin's exposition: heredity and variation. Darwin's theory had been given a rigorous mathematical formalization. The mathematical formalizations of Fisher, Haldane, Wright, and Weinberg map neatly on to Darwin's formulation. The author uses Fisher's 1930 The Genetical theory of Natural Selection to demonstrate this point.

  • Chapter 11 - How physics fakes design

  • from Part IV - Function, adaptation, and design
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 217-238

  • Summary

    Contemporary atheism usually conceives religion as centered on a core of statements, each of them designed to correspond to the cosmic facts. Classic anthropological and sociological studies of religion often start in a different place with practices attending to the multi-dimensional character of religious life. Worlds change when people revise their ideas about the boundaries of objects or about how to classify things together or what is the normal course of a process. The chapter introduces notions of fictional truth that might be extended directly to notions of mythical and religious truth. It presents the idea of the permanent progressiveness underlying strong ethical truth, suggests introducing more stringent demands on a notion of mythical truth. Religious truth includes mythical truth, but isn't exhausted by it. There are many dimensions of religious practice, and statements play other roles besides the telling of stories or the recounting of lore.

  • Chapter 1 - Human evolution

  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 13-28

  • Summary

    Molecular biology has recently provided genetic evidence indicating that some interbreeding between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis likely occurred. Erect posture and large brain are the two most conspicuous human anatomical traits. The advent of culture has brought with it cultural evolution, a superorganic mode of evolution superimposed on the organic mode, which has, in the last few millennia, become the dominant mode of human evolution. Ethics and ethical behavior may serve as a model case of how we may seek the evolutionary explanation of a distinctively human trait. Humans evaluate their behavior as either right or wrong, moral or immoral, as a consequence of their eminent intellectual capacities, which include self-awareness and abstract thinking. Ethical behavior is an attribute of the biological make-up of humans and is, in that sense, a product of biological evolution. One major contribution of sociobiology to evolutionary theory is the notion of inclusive fitness.

  • Chapter 10 - Function and teleology

  • from Part IV - Function, adaptation, and design
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 193-216

  • Summary

    Evolutionary theory, in its application to finite populations of organisms, is a probabilistic theory. To understand more precisely what is involved in the biological claim that mutations are unguided, this chapter considers a simple experiment. The experiment involves a large number of blue organisms so that one gets mutation frequencies different from zero. If the existence of guided mutations doesn't show that God exists, then the nonexistence of guided mutations doesn't show that God does not exist. Atheists and theists should agree that the biological question is separate from the theological question. The chapter suggests that Pierre Duhem's thesis provides a good model for how biological findings about mutation are related to theistic claims about divine intervention in the mutation process. Some versions of interventionist theism, like Young Earth Creationism, are logically inconsistent with evolutionary theory. The idea that God sometimes intervenes in the mutation process is different.

  • Chapter 4 - Consilience, historicity, and the species problem

  • from Part II - Taxonomy and systematics
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 65-86

  • Summary

    The species problem is one of the big problems in biology and the philosophy of biology. In this chapter the author offers a positive answer to the species problem. In particular, the author suggests that when Michael Ruse and others argue against the species-are-individual thesis, they miss what is most important about that thesis: that species are historical entities. The author also tries to clarify what it means to say that species are historical entities by developing the idea that species are path-dependent entities. When it comes to the question of whether 'species' refers to a real category in nature, the author offer a pragmatic form of species anti-realism. Such anti-realism holds that the species category is not a natural category, yet the word 'species' should not be relegated to the dust heap of outdated theoretical terms.

  • Chapter 7 - Population genetics, economic theory, and eugenics in R. A. Fisher

  • from Part III - The structure of evolutionary theory
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 137-150

  • Summary

    This chapter examines whether there is a relationship between the two kinds of texts that the author has identified: the theoretical contributions that use the economic metaphor of the growth of capital under compound interest in order to illustrate the demographic problem of the growth of a population, and the texts where Ronald Aylmer Fisher discusses human evolution and eugenics in economic terms. To illustrate the economic flavor of Fisher's treatment of evolution, the author first discusses Fisher's concept of fitness, which itself comes at the beginning of the section on the fundamental theorem of natural selection, probably the most famous passage of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (GTNS). Fisher's eugenic doctrine comes down to a few leitmotivs, almost all of which have a strong economic flavor. Finally, from a biological point of view, Fisher's economic analogy comes into play only when he discusses the Malthusian parameter.

  • Chapter 5 - DNA barcoding and taxonomic practice

  • from Part II - Taxonomy and systematics
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 87-106

  • Summary

    This chapter investigates how taxonomists have responded to DNA barcoding, a high-throughput, semi-automated method of assigning unique identifiers to taxa. In this chapter it is argued that barcoding is an evolving method, and assessments of barcoding's weaknesses, and improvements upon its strengths, are ongoing. Barcodes are created from a tissue sample of a field or museum specimen, extracting the DNA, amplifying the barcode region, and then sequencing it. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) arise from applications of the sequence divergence benchmark, a process that creates operational terminal nodes in genetic phylogenies. Automated sequencing of barcodes, particularly with increasing throughput of specimens, presents challenges for creating algorithms to identify OTUs. The strongest criticism about the technology and method itself raises doubts about the use of distances between varying nucleotide sequences to differentiate specimens. Integrative taxonomy aims to combine the frequently separated tasks of delimiting and classifying species.

  • Chapter 2 - Evolutionary theory, causal completeness, and theism

  • from Part I - Evolution and theology
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 31-44

  • Summary

    Evolutionary theory, in its application to finite populations of organisms, is a probabilistic theory. To understand more precisely what is involved in the biological claim that mutations are unguided, this chapter considers a simple experiment. The experiment involves a large number of blue organisms so that one gets mutation frequencies different from zero. If the existence of guided mutations doesn't show that God exists, then the nonexistence of guided mutations doesn't show that God does not exist. Atheists and theists should agree that the biological question is separate from the theological question. The chapter suggests that Pierre Duhem's thesis provides a good model for how biological findings about mutation are related to theistic claims about divine intervention in the mutation process. Some versions of interventionist theism, like Young Earth Creationism, are logically inconsistent with evolutionary theory. The idea that God sometimes intervenes in the mutation process is different.

  • Chapter 3 - Religion, truth, and progress

  • from Part I - Evolution and theology
  • Edited by R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto, Denis Walsh, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Evolutionary Biology
    Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    13 March 2014, pp 45-62

  • Summary

    Contemporary atheism usually conceives religion as centered on a core of statements, each of them designed to correspond to the cosmic facts. Classic anthropological and sociological studies of religion often start in a different place with practices attending to the multi-dimensional character of religious life. Worlds change when people revise their ideas about the boundaries of objects or about how to classify things together or what is the normal course of a process. The chapter introduces notions of fictional truth that might be extended directly to notions of mythical and religious truth. It presents the idea of the permanent progressiveness underlying strong ethical truth, suggests introducing more stringent demands on a notion of mythical truth. Religious truth includes mythical truth, but isn't exhausted by it. There are many dimensions of religious practice, and statements play other roles besides the telling of stories or the recounting of lore.

Page 1 of 2