Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“This book will interest readers looking for the most recent discussions and finer points of current thinking about evolution. Those with a technical background in the mathematics of probability and statistics will find parts of this book especially informative, but those preferring to skip the technicalities will discover plenty that illuminates the ‘machinery of change’ behind evolution without the mathematics. . . . Highly recommended.” * Choice *
“Abrams’s exciting new book aims to correct fundamental mistakes that have bedeviled philosophical thinking about evolutionary fitness and natural selection for forty-some years. Using information about the empirical procedures that scientists deploy and focusing on population-environment systems rather than on single organisms, he throws new light on natural selection as a probabilistic and causal influence on evolution.” -- Elliott Sober, author of The Design Argument
“Abrams gives an illuminating discussion of fundamental concepts in evolutionary studies from the sometimes opposing views of the philosophy of biology and evolutionary biology. He treats the foundational ideas of probability, fitness, and population with a clearly personal view but with clarity and a command of the literature in both philosophy and biology. I found his introduction of population-environment systems to be both provocative and compelling. The book will have a permanent place on my shelves.” -- Bruce Weir, author of Genetic Data Analysis
“A must-read for philosophers of biology who want to continue to participate in debates about the nature of fitness and probability in evolutionary theory. Abrams has accomplished what he set out to do: elaborate and defend a particular way of understanding fitness and probability that illuminates the causal role of natural selection and fitness in evolutionary theory.” -- Christopher Stephens, coeditor of Philosophy of Biology
“Marshall Abrams’s erudite analysis of fitness is motivated by his view that philosophy of science enhances understanding by tackling issues that working evolutionary biologists can avoid. Practitioners can avoid the issues because they study specific outcomes that take place among many other possibilities. Abrams generalizes this idea into what he calls population-environment systems based on complex interacting components that can yield various possible outcomes depending on chance. Yet he is sympathetic with everyday researchers who must use imprecise and flexible language to describe things with still inchoate understanding—as evidenced by Barbara McClintock’s once telling me that she knew how transposable elements worked long before she could put it into words.” -- Daniel L. Hartl, coauthor of How Life Works
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
0. Background on Probability and Evolution
Part I. Laying the Foundation
1. Population-Environment Systems
2. Causal Probability and Empirical Practice
3. Irrelevance of Fitness as a Causal Property of Token Organisms
4. Roles of Environmental Variation in Selection
Part II. Reconstructing Evolution and Chance
5. Populations in Biological Practice: Pragmatic Yet Real
6. Real Causation in Pragmatic Population-Environment Systems
7. Fitness Concepts in Measurement and Modeling
8. Chance in Population-Environment Systems
9. The Input Measure Problem for MM-CCS Chance
10. Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
