Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T17:07:21.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does “Information” Provide a Compelling Framework for a Theory of Natural Selection? Grounds for Caution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sahotra Sarkar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Frank has recently argued for an information-theoretic interpretation of natural selection. This interpretation is based on the identification of a measure related to the Malthusian parameter (for population change) with the Jeffreys divergence between the present allelic distribution of the population and that distribution in the next generation. It is pointed out in this analysis that this identification only holds if the mean fitness of the population is a constant, that is, there is no selection. This problem is used to argue for the superiority of the standard dynamical interpretation of natural selection over its information-theoretic counterpart.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 1 , January 2014 , pp. 22 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This analysis was presented at the Conference on Evolution, Intentionality and Information, Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, May 2013. Comments by other participants, in particular, David Crawford, Eva Jablonka, and Samir Okasha, contributed to sharpening the analysis. For discussions on this topic, in some cases over many decades, thanks are also due to the late James F. Crow, A. W. F. Edwards, and R. C. Lewontin. For comments on an earlier draft, thanks are also due to Ulrich Stegmann.

References

Akaike, Hirotugu. 1973. “Information Theory and an Extension of the Maximum Likelihood Principle.” In Second International Symposium on Information Theory, ed. Petrov, Boris Nikolaevich and Csaki, Frigyes, 267–81. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.Google Scholar
Edwards, Anthony W. F. 1994. “The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection.” Biological Reviews 69:443–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fisher, Ronald A. 1922. “On the Dominance Ratio.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 42:321–41.Google Scholar
Fisher, Ronald A. 1930. The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: Clarendon.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Steven A. 2012. “Natural Selection.” Pt. 5, “How to Read the Fundamental Equations of Evolutionary Change in Terms of Information Theory.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 25:2377–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haldane, John B. S. 1924. “A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection.” Pt. 1. Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 23:19–41.Google Scholar
Haldane, John B. S. 1932. The Causes of Evolution. London: Harper.Google Scholar
Jeffreys, Harold. 1946. “An Invariant Form for the Prior Probability in Estimation Problems.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A 186:453–61.Google ScholarPubMed
Kullback, Solomon. 1968. Information Theory and Statistics. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Lewontin, Richard C. 1974. The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Michod, Richard E. 2000. Darwinian Dynamics: Evolutionary Transitions in Fitness and Individuality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Okasha, Samir. 2006. Evolution and the Levels of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okasha, Samir 2008. “Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection: A Philosophical Analysis.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59:319–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Sahotra. 1996a. “Biological Information: A Skeptical Look at Some Central Dogmas of Molecular Biology.” In The Philosophy and History of Molecular Biology: New Perspectives, ed. Sarkar, Sahotra, 187–231. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Sahotra 1996b. “Decoding ‘Coding’: Information and DNA.” BioScience 46:857–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Sahotra 1998. Genetics and Reductionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Sahotra 2004. “Evolutionary Theory in the 1920s: The Nature of the Synthesis.” Philosophy of Science 71:1215–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, Sahotra 2007. “Haldane and the Emergence of Modern Evolutionary Theory.” In Handbook of the Philosophy of Biology, ed. Matthen, Mohan and Stephens, Christopher, 49–86, New York: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephens, Christopher 2011. “Drift and the Causes of Evolution.” In Causality in the Sciences, ed. Illari, Phyllis K., Russo, Frederic, and Williamson, Jon, 445–69. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Illari, Phyllis K., Russo, Frederic, and Williamson, Jon 2014. “Formal Darwinism: Some Questions.” Biology and Philosophy, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Wright, Sewall. 1921. “Systems of Mating.” Pt. 4, “The Effects of Selection.” Genetics 6:162–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar