Content area
Full Text
Biol Philos (2011) 26:905913
DOI 10.1007/s10539-010-9241-3
REVIEW ESSAY
A genes eye view of Darwinian populations
Review of Peter Godfrey-Smiths Darwininan populations and natural selection. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009
David C. Queller
Received: 12 November 2010 / Accepted: 15 November 2010 / Published online: 1 March 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract Biologists and philosophers differ on whether selection should be analyzed at the level of the gene or of the individual. In Peter Godfrey-Smiths book, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, he argues that individuals can be good members of Darwinian populations, whereas genes rarely can. I take issue with parts of this view, and suggest that Godfrey-Smiths scheme for thinking about Darwinian populations is also applicable to populations of genes.
Keywords Population Natural selection Heredity Organism Replicator
Evolutionary biologists are sometimes viewed with a bit of suspicion by other biologists. Its not that these other biologists question the Darwinian paradigm. Instead, it is because they feel that evolutionary biology is in some way softer than other branches of biology. It is not as reductionist and seems to make less appeal to the hard sciences. It is intrinsically historical, and much of what is important happened in the past and cannot be subject to controlled experiment. Yet looked at another way, evolutionary biology is doing better than its mechanistic counterparts. The evolutionary process essentially comes down to selection and inheritance, and we have an excellent understanding of both of those. We know pretty well what selection is and how to measure it and we know how genes are transmitted from one generation to the next. We can model these two phenomena quite effectively, and any biologist who thinks evolution is not based on hard rigorous mathematical
This review essay should have been published in Biology & Philosophy Volume 26:4 as a part of the Godfrey-Smith Book Symposium
D. C. Queller (&)
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USAe-mail: [email protected]
123
906 D. C. Queller
theory is just ignorant. There is something missing though. There is a gap between how genes get transmitted and how selection works on phenotypes; we need to understand how genes translate into phenotypes. It is the problem of development, though not...