Card 6.12 · Root VI — The Philosophy of X Family
Philosophy of Biology
Is there purpose in living things?
Philosophy of biology examines the concepts of the life sciences — species, function, fitness, gene — and asks what kind of explanation biology provides.
On this card
Where it sits
Under VI. Philosophy of X. Borders 1.9 Laws of nature, 1.11 Emergence, 3.3.6 Animal ethics, 6.13.
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The recurring problems
| Problem | The question |
|---|---|
| Teleology | What grounds function talk without a designer |
| Species | Whether species are real kinds or convenient divisions |
| Units of selection | Whether selection acts on genes, organisms, groups or all |
| Fitness | Whether it can be defined without circularity |
| Reductionism | Whether biology reduces to chemistry and physics |
| Adaptationism | When it is legitimate to assume a trait is an adaptation |
Where do you stand?
Is there purpose in living things?
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Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Final causes in living things; extensive biological observation |
| Al-Jahiz | c. 776–869 | Islamic | Struggle for existence; environmental influence on species |
| Charles Darwin | 1809–1882 | English | Natural selection as a mechanism |
| Ernst Mayr | 1904–2005 | German-American | Biological species concept; proximate and ultimate causes |
| Stephen Jay Gould | 1941–2002 | American | Critique of unconstrained adaptationism |
| Ruth Millikan | b. 1933 | Analytic | Proper function defined by selection history |
Talk about it here
Conversations about this question in Biology & evolution:
- Genes carry information only in Shannon’s sense; the rest is metaphor 6 replies
- Teleosemantics is the best naturalistic theory of content we have 6 replies
- Species are drawn, not discovered: biology has already chosen nominalism 5 replies
- Calling al-Jahiz a forerunner of Darwin does him no favours 5 replies
- “Natural birth”: does an evolutionary story about a trait tell us whether it is good? 4 replies
Join free to ask about it Everything in Biology & evolution
Connections
→ 6.8 · ↔ 1.9, 1.11, 3.3.6, 6.13, 1.1.2 · ◇ teleology, adaptationism, reductionism · ○ Axial Age; Islamic golden age; Modern; Table 1
→ depends on · ↔ borders: genuine overlap, neither prior · ◇ answered by: points from question to answers · ○ appears in: points to the timeline and the comparisons
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 295.