Explanation in Classical Population Genetics
نویسندگان
چکیده
The recent literature in philosophy of biology has drawn attention to the different sorts of explanations proffered in the biological sciences—we have molecular, biomedical, and evolutionary explanations. Do these explanations all have a common structure or relation that they seek to capture? This paper will answer in the negative. I defend a pluralistic and pragmatic approach to explanation. Using examples from classical population genetics, I argue that formal demonstrations, and even strictly “mathematical truths,” may serve as explanatory in different historical contexts.
منابع مشابه
Probabilistic causation and the explanatory role of natural selection.
The explanatory role of natural selection is one of the long-term debates in evolutionary biology. Nevertheless, the consensus has been slippery because conceptual confusions and the absence of a unified, formal causal model that integrates different explanatory scopes of natural selection. In this study we attempt to examine two questions: (i) What can the theory of natural selection explain? ...
متن کاملModified Epistemology and Evidentalism
Justification and religious rationality constitutes one of the main issues of religious epistemology and enjoys a special place to day in the philosophy of religion. In response to the justification of religious belief there are various approaches one of which is modified epistemology which is propounded by creation well – known philosophers such as Alvin plantinga, Nicolas walterstorf etc. ...
متن کاملDrift and “ Statistically Abstractive
A hitherto neglected form of explanation is explored, especially its role in population genetics. “Statistically abstractive explanation” (SA explanation) mandates the suppression of factors probabilistically relevant to an explanandum when these factors are extraneous to the theoretical project being pursued. When these factors are suppressed, the explanandum is rendered uncertain. But this un...
متن کاملWayward Modeling: Population Genetics and Natural Selection*
Since the introduction of mathematical population genetics, its machinery has shaped our fundamental understanding of natural selection. Selection is taken to occur when differential fitnesses produce differential rates of reproductive success, where fitnesses are understood as parameters in a population genetics model. To understand selection is to understand what these parameter values measur...
متن کاملNature of deleterious mutation load in Drosophila.
Much population genetics and evolution theory depends on knowledge of genomic mutation rates and distributions of mutation effects for fitness, but most information comes from a few mutation accumulation experiments in Drosophila in which replicated chromosomes are sheltered from natural selection by a balancer chromosome. I show here that data from these experiments imply the existence of a la...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2005