Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:54:16.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Elliott Sober
Elliott Sober*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ernst Mayr has argued that Darwinian theory discredited essentialist modes of thought and replaced them with what he has called “population thinking”. In this paper, I characterize essentialism as embodying a certain conception of how variation in nature is to be explained, and show how this conception was undermined by evolutionary theory. The Darwinian doctrine of evolutionary gradualism makes it impossible to say exactly where one species ends and another begins; such line-drawing problems are often taken to be the decisive reason for thinking that essentialism is untenable. However, according to the view of essentialism I suggest, this familiar objection is not fatal to essentialism. It is rather the essentialist's use of what I call the natural state model for explaining variation which clashes with evolutionary theory. This model implemented the essentialist's requirement that properties of populations be defined in terms of properties of member organisms. Requiring such constituent definitions is reductionistic in spirit; additionally, evolutionary theory shows that such definitions are not available, and, moreover, that they are not needed to legitimize population-level concepts. Population thinking involves the thesis that population concepts may be legitimized by showing their connections with each other, even when they are not reducible to concepts applying at lower levels of organization. In the paper, I develop these points by describing Aristotle's ideas on the origins of biological variation; they are a classic formulation of the natural state model. I also describe how the development of statistical ideas in the 19th century involved an abandoning of the natural state model.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 350 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by 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

†

Suggestions made by William Coleman, James Crow, Joan Kung, David Hull, Geoffrey Joseph, Steven Kimbrough, Richard Lewontin, Ernst Mayr, Terrence Penner, William Provine, Robert Stauffer, Dennis Stampe and Victor Hilts helped me considerably in writing this paper.

References

Agassiz, L. (1859), Essay on Classification. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ayala, F. (1978), “The Mechanisms of Evolution,” Scientific American 239, 3: 56–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Balme, D. (1962), “Development of Biology in Aristotle and Theophrastus: Theory of Spontaneous Generation,” Phronesis, 2, 1: 91–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boring, E. (1929), A History of Experimental Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Buffon, L. (1749), Histoire Naturelle. Paris.Google Scholar
Cohen, R. (1972), “Francis Galton's Contribution to Genetics,” Journal of the History of Biology 5, 2: 389–412.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1859), On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1868), The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Delbrück, M. (1971), “Aristotle-totle-totle,” in Monod, J. and Borek, J. (eds.), Microbes and Life,: 50–55. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Eldredge, N. and Gould, S. (1972), “Punctuated Equilibria: an Alternative to Phyletic/Gradualism,” in Schopf, T. (ed.), Models in Paleobiology: 82–115. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper.Google Scholar
Furth, M. (1975), Essence and Individual: Reconstruction of an Aristotelian Metaphysics, chapter 11, duplicated for the meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, unpublished.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, M. (1966), “On Psychologism in the Logic of Taxonomic Controversies,” Systematic Zoology 15: 207–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghiselin, M. (1969), The Triumph of the Darwinian Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, M. (1974), “A Radical Solution to the Species Problem,” Systematic Zoology 23: 536–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glass, B. (1959a), “Heredity and Variation in the Eighteenth Century Concept of the Species,” in Glass, B., et al. (eds.): Forerunners of Darwin: 144–72. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Glass, B (1956b), “Maupertuis, Pioneer of Genetics and Evolution,” in Glass, B., et al. (eds.): Forerunners of Darwin: 51–83. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1975), “The Autonomy of Statistical Law,” talk delivered to The American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, unpublished.Google Scholar
Herrnstein, R. (1971), “IQ,” The Atlantic Monthly 228 (3): 43–64.Google Scholar
Hilts, V. (1973), “Statistics and Social Science,” in Giere, R. and Westfall, R. (eds.), Foundations of Scientific Method in the Nineteenth Century: 206–33. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1965), “The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy: 2000 Years of Stasis,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 15: 314–16; 16: 1–18.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1967), “The Metaphysics of Evolution,” British Journal for the History of Science 3, 12: 309–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1968), “The Conflict between Spontaneous Generation and Aristotle's Metaphysics.” Proceedings of the Seventh Inter-American Congress of Philosophy, 2 (1968): 245–50. Quebec City: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1973), Darwin and his Critics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1976), “Are Species Really Individuals?” Systematic Zoology 25: 174–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hull, D. (1978), “A Matter of Individuality,” Philosophy of Science 45: 335–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ihde, A. (1964), The Development of Modern Chemistry. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Kripke, S. (1972), “Naming and Necessity,” in Davidson, D. and Harman, G. (eds.), Semantics of Natural Languages: 253–355; 763–9. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kripke, S. (1978), “Time and Identity.” Lectures given at Cornell University, unpublished.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. (1974), The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. (1977), “Biological Determinism as a Social Weapon” in the Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective: Biology as a Social Weapon: 6–20. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Burgess.Google Scholar
Lloyd, G. (1968), Aristotle: The Growth and Structure of His Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, A. (1936), The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1959), “Typological versus Population Thinking,” in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal: 409–12. Washington: The Anthropological Society of Washington; also in Mayr (1976): 26–9; page references to Mayr (1976).Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1963), Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1969), “The Biological Meaning of Species,” Biol. Journal of the Linnean Society, 1: 311–20; also in Mayr (1976): 515–25; page references to Mayr (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1976), Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Meyer, A. (1939), The Rise of Embryology. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Minkowski, H. (1908), “Space and Time” in Lorentz, H., Einstein, A., et al., The Principle of Relativity: 73–91. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Popper, K. (1972), Objective Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Preuss, A. (1975), Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works. New York: Georg Olms.Google Scholar
Provine, W. (1971), The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. (1975), “The Meaning of ‘Meaning',” Mind, Language and Reality: 215–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quetelet, A. (1842), A Treatise on Man and the Development of his Faculties, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Quine (1953a), “Identity, Ostension, Hypostasis” in From a Logical Point of View: 65–79. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Quine, W. (1953b), “Reference and Modality” in From a Logical Point of View: 139–59. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Quine, W. (1960), Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rabel, G. (1939), “Long Before Darwin: Linne's Views on the Origin of Species,” Discovery, N.S., 2: 121–75.Google Scholar
Ramsbottom, J. (1938), “Linnaeus and the Species Concept,” Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London: 192–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roger, J. (1963), Les Sciences de la Vie dans la Pensée Française du XVIII Siècle. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1980a), “The Principle of Parsimony,” British Journal for Philosophy of Science, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1980b), “Realism and Independence,” Noûs, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1980c), “Significant Units and the Group Selection Controversy,” Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todhunter, I. (1865), History of the Theory of Probability to the Time of Laplace. New York: Chelsea Publishing.Google Scholar
Walker, H. (1929), Studies in the History of Statistical Method. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1975), Sex and Evolution. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Wilson, E. and Bossert, W. (1971), A Primer of Population Biology. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer.Google Scholar