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The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access published online on October 15, 2009
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, doi:10.1093/bjps/axp041
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press [on behalf of British Society for the Philosophy of Science]. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Natures of Selection

Tim Lewens

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH, UK tml1000{at}cam.ac.uk


  Abstract

Elliott Sober and his defenders think of selection, drift, mutation, and migration as distinct evolutionary forces. This paper exposes an ambiguity in Sober's account of the force of selection: sometimes he appears to equate the force of selection with variation in fitness, sometimes with ‘selection for properties’. Sober's own account of fitness as a property analogous to life-expectancy shows how the two conceptions come apart. Cases where there is selection against variance in offspring number also show that selection and drift cannot be distinguished in the way Sober hopes for. These issues have significance beyond the parochial matter of the coherence of Sober's system. There is no good principled answer to the question of which features of a population should count among the contributors to fitness. This means there is no non-arbitrary account of the nature of selection.

  1. Evolutionary Forces
  2. Selection and Drift
  3. Evolutionary and Newtonian Forces
  4. Is Natural Selection a Cause?
  5. An Ambiguity in Sober's Account of Selection: Variation in Fitness versus Selection-for
  6. A Second Problem: The Determinants of Fitness
  7. Conclusion


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