Spring 2014

Part of Darwin's “Diagram of Divergence of Taxa”, the only diagram in On The Origin of Species. The diagram depicts “hypothetical phylogenetic relationships, showing how lineages diverge from common ancestors and give rise to both extinct and extant species. Time intervals (between Roman numerals) represent thousands of generations. [...] Distance along the horizontal axis represents degree of divergence (as, for example, in body form). Darwin recognized that rates of evolution vary greatly, showing this by different angles in the diagram” (Futuyma, 2009, p. 21). Note too that the diagram displays Darwin's recognition that it is the most divergent species that are most likely to survive. For the full diagram see here.

Details | Instructor | Overview | Textbooks | Assessment | Schedule

Details

Instructor

Overview

This class is an introduction to philosophy of biology focussing on issues connected with the nature and scope of biological explanations. We first examine a set of foundational questions concerning the nature and scope of the explanations provided by natural selection. We then examine the explanatory role of genes in development. No prior philosophy of science or biology will be assumed.

Textbooks

The following textbook is mandatory:

• Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2009. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, Oxford University Press, Oxford. [AddAll] [Chapters 1-2]

For those without any background in evolutionary biology, the definitive textbooks are:

• Futuyma, Douglas J. 2009. Evolution, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland MA. [AddAll]
• Ridley, Mark. 2003. Evolution, Blackwell, Malden MA. [AddAll]

Assessment

Requirements:

• Fifteen 1–2 page weekly reading summaries.
• Two 8–10 page research papers.

The final grade will be determined approximately as follows:

Note: Graduate students or students enrolled for upper level writing credit will be required to write longer papers. Graduate students will also be required to do additional reading and meet for an additional discussion section.

Due dates:

Paper guidelines [PDF]

Schedule

Meeting One: Introductory Discussion (Thursday 16 January)

Secondary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §1).

Meeting Two: The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness (Tuesday 21 January)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §2.1).
• Mills, Susan K. and Beatty, John H. 1979. “The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness”, in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 46, No. 2, June, pp. 263–286.
• Sober, Elliott. unpublished. “Two Fitness Fallacies”., §1.

Meeting Three: Problems for The Propensity Interpretation (Thursday 23 January)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott. 2000. “The Two Faces of Fitness”, in Singh, Krimbas, Paul and Beatty (Ed), Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 309–321.
• Sober, Elliott. unpublished. “Two Fitness Fallacies”., §2.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §§2.2–2.3).

Secondary

• Orr, H. Allen. 2009. “Fitness and its Role in Evolutionary Genetics”, in Nature Reviews Genetics, Vol. 10, No. 8, August, pp. 531–539. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nrg2603.

Meeting Four: Selection Of and Selection For (Tuesday 28 January)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott. 1984. The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, §3.2. URI: http://goo.gl/Xy123Q
• Fodor, Jerry A. 2008. “Against Darwinism”, in Mind and Language, Vol. 23, No. 1, February, pp. 1–24. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00324.x.

Secondary

• Sober, Elliott. 2010. “Natural Selection, Causality, and Laws: What Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini Got Wrong”, in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 77, No. 4, October, pp. 594–607. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/656020.

Meeting Five: Replicators and Interactors (Thursday 30 January)

Primary

• Sterelny, Kim and Griffiths, Paul E. 1999. “The Gene’s Eye View of Evolution”, in Sterelny and Griffiths (Ed), Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 55–76.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §§2.4–2.6).

Secondary

• Dawkins, Richard. 1982. “Replicators and Vehicles”, in King’s College Sociobiology Group (Ed), Current Problems in Sociobiology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 45–64.

No Class Tuesday 4 February

Meeting Six: What Can Selection Explain? (Thursday 6 February)

Primary

• Forber, Patrick. 2005. “On the Explanatory Roles of Natural Selection”, in Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 2, March, pp. 329–342.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §§3.1–3.3).

Secondary

• Dawkins, Richard. 1986. The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton, New York, Chapter 7. URI: http://goo.gl/GJVvsQ

Meeting Seven: Selection and Drift as Forces (Tuesday 11 February)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott. 1984. The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, Chapter 1. URI: http://goo.gl/K0Hxf1

Meeting Eight: Selection and Drift as Trends (Thursday 13 February)

Primary

• Matthen, Mohan and Ariew, André. 2002. “Two Ways of Thinking about Fitness and Natural Selection”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 99, No. 2, February, pp. 55–83. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3655552.

Meeting Nine: Selection and Drift as Causes (Tuesday 18 February)

Primary

• Stephens, Christopher. 2004. “Selection, Drift, and the “Forces” of Evolution”, in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 71, No. 4, October, pp. 550–570. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/423751.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §§3.4–3.6).

Meeting Ten: Evolutionary Landscapes (Thursday 20 February)

Primary

• Pigliucci, Massimo and Kaplan, Jonathan. 2006. “Slippery Landscapes: The Promises and Limits of the Adaptive Landscape Metaphor in Evolutionary Biology”, in Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 175–206.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §3.7).

Secondary

• Calcott, Brett. 2008. “Assessing the Fitness Landscape Revolution”, in Biology & Philosophy, Vol. 23, No. 5, November, pp. 639–657. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-008-9127-9.

Meeting Eleven: Individuals and Reproduction (Tuesday 25 February)

Primary

• Janzen, Daniel H. 1977. “What Are Dandelions and Aphids?”, in The American Naturalist, Vol. 111, No. 979, May, pp. 586–589.
• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §4).

Secondary

• Griesemer, James R. 2001. “The Units of Evolutionary Transition”, in Selection, Vol. 1, No. 1-3, January, pp. 67–80.
• Griesemer, James R. 2005. “The Informational Gene and the Substantial Body: On the Generalization of Evolutionary Theory by Abstraction”, in Jones and Cartwright (Ed), Idealization XII: Correcting the Model: Idealization and Abstraction in the Sciences, Rodopi, Amsterdam, Vol. 86, pp. 59–115.

No Class Thursday 27 February

Meeting Twelve: Individuals and Collectives (Tuesday 4 March)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §5).

Meeting Thirteen: Review (Thursday 6 March)

Secondary

• Hamilton, Andrew and Smith, Nathan R. and Haber, Matthew H. 2009. “Social Insects and the Individuality Thesis: Cohesion and the Colony as a Selectable Individual”, in Gadau and Fewell (Ed), Organization of Insect Societies: From Genome to Sociocomplexity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 572–589. URI: http://goo.gl/wiUyfF
• Wilson, David Sloan and Sober, Elliott. 1989. “Reviving the Superorganism”, in Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 136, No. 3, pp. 337–356. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5193(89)80169-980169-9).

No Class Tuesday 11 March and Thursday 13 March

Meeting Fourteen: Altruism and Group Selection: Theory (Tuesday 18 March)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 17–35. URI: http://goo.gl/9n0ndD

Secondary

• Okasha, Samir. 2004. “The “Averaging Fallacy” and the Levels of Selection”, in Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 2, March, pp. 167–184. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/B:BIPH.0000024406.61340.6c.

Meeting Fifteen: Altruism and Group Selection: Examples (Thursday 20 March)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 35–54.

Meeting Sixteen: Two Kinds of Group Selection (Tuesday 25 March)

Primary

• Okasha, Samir. 2006. Evolution and the Levels of Selection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, §§2.1–2.2. URI: http://goo.gl/dtLfWR

Secondary

• Damuth, John and Heisler, I. Lorraine. 1988. “Alternative Formulations of Multilevel Selection”, in Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 4, October, pp. 407–430.

Meeting Seventeen: Kin Selection and Game Theory (Thursday 27 March)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 55–86.

Meeting Eighteen: Selfish Genes and The Nature of Groups (Tuesday 1 April)

Primary

• Sober, Elliott and Wilson, David Sloan. 1998. Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, pp. 87–100.

Meeting Nineteen: Darwinian Populations and Levels of Selection (Thursday 3 April)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §§6.1–6.2).

Meeting Twenty: The Major Evolutionary Transitions (Tuesday 8 April)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §6.3).
• Kuzdzal-Fick, Jennie J. and Fox, Sara A. and Strassmann, Joan E. and Queller, David C. 2011. “High Relatedness Is Necessary and Sufficient to Maintain Multicellularity in Dictyostelium”, in Science, Vol. 334, No. 6062, December, pp. 1548–1551. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1213272.
• Queller, David C. and Strassmann, Joan E. 2013. “Experimental evolution of multicellularity using microbial pseudo-organisms”, in Biology Letters, Vol. 9, No. 1, February, pp. 20120636. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0636.

Meeting Twenty One: Levels of Selection and The Major Evolutionary Transitions (Thursday 10 April)

Primary

• Okasha, Samir. 2006. Evolution and the Levels of Selection, Oxford University Press, Oxford, §8. URI: http://goo.gl/UKUe4D

No Class Tuesday Tuesday 15 April

Meeting Twenty Two: The First Transition (Thursday 17 April)

Primary

• de Duve, Christian. 1996. “The Constraints of Chance”, in Scientific American, Vol. 274, No. 1, January, pp. 112. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0196-112.
• White, Roger. 2007. “Does Origins of Life Research Rest on a Mistake?”, in Noûs, Vol. 41, No. 3, September, pp. 453–477. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2007.00655.x.

Meeting Twenty Three: The Gene's Eye View (Tuesday 22 April)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §7).

Meeting Twenty Four: Cultural Evolution (Thursday 24 April)

Primary

• Godfrey-Smith (2009, §8).

Meeting Twenty Five: Cultural Evolution (Thursday 28 April)

Secondary

• Dennett, Daniel C. 2011. “Homunculi rule: Reflections on Darwinian populations and natural selection by Peter Godfrey Smith”, in Biology & Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 4, July, pp. 475–488. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9242-2.
• Sterelny, Kim. 2011. “Darwinian spaces: Peter Godfrey-Smith on selection and evolution”, in Biology & Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 4, July, pp. 489–500. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9244-0.
• Queller, David C. 2011. “A gene’s eye view of Darwinian populations”, in Biology & Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 6, November, pp. 905–913. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9241-3.
• Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2011. “Agents and Acacias: Replies to Dennett, Sterelny, and Queller”, in Biology & Philosophy, Vol. 26, No. 4, July, pp. 501–515. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10539-011-9246-6.

Updated: 28 April 2014