Conceptual issues in evolutionary biology / edited by Elliott Sober.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Sober, Elliott.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Evolution (Biology).

Evolution (Biology)--Philosophy.

Biology--Philosophy.

Biology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (641 p.)

Edition:

3rd ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Essays by philosophers and scientists address conceptual issues in evolutionary biology; a new edition substantially updated, with new sections on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race.

Contents:

Intro

Preface

List of Contributors

I Fitness

1 The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness

2 The Two Faces of Fitness

II Units of Selection

3 Excerpts from Adaptation and Natural Selection

4 Levels of Selection: An Alternative to Individualism in Biology and the Human Sciences

III Adaptationism

5 The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme

6 Optimization Theory in Evolution

IV Women in the Evolutionary Process

7 Empathy, Polyandry, and the Myth of the Coy Female

8 Pre-theoretical Assumptions in Evolutionary Explanations of Female Sexuality

V Evolutionary Psychology

9 Toward Mapping the Evolved Functional Organization of Mind and Brain

10 Evolutionary Psychology: A Critique

VI Laws in Evolutionary Theory

11 The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis

12 Two Outbreaks of Lawlessness in Recent Philosophy of Biology

VII Reductionism

13 1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences

14 Why the Antireductionist Consensus Won't Survive the Case of Classical Mendelian Genetics

15 The Multiple Realizability Argument Against Reductionism

VIII Essentialism and Population Thinking

16 Typological versus Population Thinking

17 Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism

IX Species

18 A Matter of Individuality

19 Choosing Among Alternative ''Phylogenetic'' Species Concepts

X Phylogenetic Inference

20 Cases in Which Parsimony or Compatibility Methods Will Be Positively Misleading

21 The Logical Basis of Phylogenetic Analysis

XI Race-Social Construction or Biological Reality?

22 Why There Are No Human Races

23 A New Perspective on the Race Debate

XII Cultural Evolution

24 Does Culture Evolve?

25 Models of Cultural Evolution

XIII Evolutionary Ethics

26 Moral Philosophy as Applied Science.

27 Four Ways of ''Biologicizing'' Ethics

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

"Bradford books."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-262-29995-X

1-282-09813-6

9786612098130

0-262-28400-6

1-4294-7768-7

OCLC:

568000757