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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2004 55(4):693-712; doi:10.1093/bjps/55.4.693
© 2004 by British Society for the Philosophy of Science
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Fitness, Probability and the Principles of Natural Selection

Frédéric Bouchard and Alex Rosenberg

Center for Philosophy of Biology, Box 90743, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA, alexrose{at}duke.edu

We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation of the theory as one about populations exclusively.


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