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Natural Selection, Mechanism, and the Statistical Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Fermín C. Fulda
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Abstract

What is natural selection? I address this question by exploring the relation between two debates: Is natural selection a mechanism? Is natural selection a causal or a statistical theory? I argue that the first can be assessed only relative to a model and that, following the second, there are two fundamentally different and independent kinds of models, Modern-Synthesis and Darwinian models. MS-models, I argue, are not mechanistic even if they are causal. D-models, in contrast, are mechanistic. A causal-mechanistic interpretation of D-models is thus compatible with a statistical interpretation of MS-models. Natural selection, I conclude, lacks a single, unifying nature.

Type
Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 5 , December 2017 , pp. 1080 - 1092
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank audiences at the meeting in Montreal of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, especially Eric Saidel for organizing the session on natural selection and mechanism; the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (Paris) workshop on statistical and causal approaches to natural selection, particularly Philippe Huneman for putting it together; the Philosophy of Science Association meeting in Atlanta; and the Rotman Institute of Philosophy at Western University. I would also like to thank Denis Walsh and André Ariew for insightful comments. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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