The Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology

About this book

The philosophy of biology is one of the most exciting new areas in the field of philosophy and one that is attracting much attention from working scientists. This Companion, edited by two of the founders of the field, includes newly commissioned essays by senior scholars and up-and-coming younger scholars who collectively examine the main areas of the subject - the nature of evolutionary theory, classification, teleology and function, ecology, and the problematic relationship between biology and religion, among other topics. Up-to-date and comprehensive in its coverage, this unique volume will be of interest not only to professional philosophers but also to students in the humanities and researchers in the life sciences and related areas of inquiry.

Contents

Introduction David L. Hull and Michael Ruse; 1. Adaptation Tim Lewens; 2. Population genetics Roberta L. Millstein and Robert A. Skipper; 3. Units and levels of selection Elisabeth A. Lloyd; 4. What's wrong with the emergenist statistical interpretation of natural selection and random drift Robert N. Brandon and Grant Ramsey; 5. Gene Paul E. Griffiths and Karola Stotz; 6. Information in biology Peter Godfrey-Smith; 7. Reductionism (and antireductionism) in biology Alexander Rosenberg; 8. Mechanisms and models Lindley Darden; 9. Teleology Andre Ariew; 10. Macroevolution, minimalism, and radiation of the animals Kim Sterelny; 11. Philosophy and phylogenetics: historical and current connections Maureen Kearney; 12. Human evolution: the three grand challenges of human biology Francisco J. Ayala; 13. Varieties of evolutionary psychology David J. Buller; 14. Neurobiology Valerie Gray Hardcastle; 15. Biology explanations of human sexuality: the genetic basis of sexual orientation Christopher Horvath; 16. Game theory in evolutionary biology Zachary Ernst; 17. What is an 'embryo' and how do we know it? Jane Maienschein; 18. Evolutionary developmental biology Manfred D. Laubichler; 19. Molecular and systems biology and bioethics Jason Scott Robert; 20. Ecology Gregory M. Mikkelson; 21. From ecological diversity to biodiversity Sohotra Sarkar; 22. Biology and religion Robert T. Pennock; 23. The moral grammar of narratives in history of biology: the case of Haeckel and Nazi biology Robert J. Richards.

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Biography

David L. Hull is an emeritus professor of philosophy at Northwestern University. The author of numerous books and articles on topics in systematics, evolutionary theory, philosophy of biology, and naturalized epistemology, he is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Michael Ruse is professor of philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of many books on evolutionary biology, including Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? and Darwinism and Its Discontents, both published by Cambridge University Press. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he has appeared on television and radio, and he contributes regularly to popular media such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Playboy Magazine.