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Natural selection, mutation, and adaptation are well-known and central topics in Darwin's theory of evolution and in the 20th – and 21st -century theories which grew out of it, but many other important topics are used in evolutionary biology that raise interesting philosophical questions. In this book, Elliott Sober analyses a much larger range of topics, including fitness, altruism, common ancestry, chance, taxonomy, phylogenetic inference, operationalism, reductionism, conventionalism, null hypotheses and default reasoning, instrumentalism versus realism, hypothetico-deductivism, essentialism, falsifiability, the principle of parsimony, the principle of the common cause, causality, determinism versus indeterminism, sensitivity to initial conditions, and the knowability of the past. Sober's clear philosophical analyses of these key concepts, arguments, and methods of inference will be valuable for all readers who want to understand evolutionary biology in both its Darwinian and its contemporary forms.
1. A Darwinian introduction
2. Fitness and natural selection
3. Units of selection
4. Common ancestry
5. Drift
6. Mutation
7. Taxa and genealogy
8. Adaptationism
9. Big-picture questions
Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor Emeritus, and William F. Vilas Research Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His previous publications include Ockham's Razors: A User's Manual (Cambridge, 2015) and The Design Argument (Cambridge, 2018).
"Philosophy of biology has grown into a respectable and autonomous discipline, but also become increasingly specialized and fragmented. Elliott Sober's book is poised to rekindle meta-scientific exploration into the epistemological and ontological dimensions of evolutionary biology, and demonstrates to both philosophers and biologists that evolutionary biology remains a fertile ground teeming with captivating conceptual issues."
– Jun Otsuka, Kyoto University
"Elliott Sober has provided an excellent, lucid tour through all the important concepts and advances in evolutionary theorising from Darwin to the present. His expositions and arguments draw on a wealth of philosophical and biological material, including many of his own original contributions to the field. Philosophers and biologists will find much to ponder, as will non-specialists with an interest in evolutionary theory."
– R. Paul Thompson, University of Toronto
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