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Neutral Spaces and Topological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology: Lessons from Some Landscapes and Mappings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Philippe Huneman
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Abstract

I consider recent uses of the notion of neutrality in evolutionary biology and ecology, questioning their relevance to the kind of explanation recently labeled ‘topological explanation’. Focusing on fitness landscapes and genotype-phenotype maps, I explore the explanatory uses of neutral subspaces, as modeled in two perspectives: hyperdimensional fitness landscapes and RNA sequence-structure maps. I argue that topological properties of such spaces account for features of evolutionary systems: respectively, capacity for adaptive evolution toward global optima and mutational robustness of genotypes. Thus many models appealing to “neutral” manifolds provide topological alternatives to hypothetical mechanisms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 969 - 983
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to the audience of the PSA Symposium “Integrating Explanatory Strategies across the Life Sciences” and especially to cosymposiasts Marta Bertolaso, Nick Jones, and Anya Plutynski for their invaluable contribution to my understanding of issues raised in the article. I also thank Carl Craver, Hugh Desmond, Daniel Kostic, Stuart Glennan, Marc Lange, and Rasmus Winther for their insightful critiques and comments. This work was funded by the ANR grant Explabio ANR—13-BSH3-0007 and the LIA CNRS ECIEB.

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