Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-22T13:12:14.374Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Implications of Use of Wright's FST for the Role of Probability and Causation in Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marshall Abrams
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Sewall Wright's is a mathematical test used to characterize differences between biological populations and identify causes of those differences. I discuss Cockerham and Weir's popular, empirically successful approach to statistical estimation of , arguing that their assumption that actual populations are sampled from an infinite set of counterfactual populations (with a common ancestral population) supports a view of natural selection and genetic drift as distinct causes. I also argue that the way in which F-statistics and other statistical tests are applied to computer simulations in empirical research shows that selection and drift correspond to differences in objective, causal probabilities.

Type
Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 596 - 608
Copyright
Copyright © The 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

†

I thank Bruce Weir, Kent Holsinger, and Yoichi Ishida for feedback and stimulating discussion concerning the ideas discussed here and for their participation in the symposium “Sewall Wright's F-Statistics: Measurement of Biological Population Structure and Its Causes.” I am grateful for feedback from audience members at that event, including but not limited to Bruce Glymour and Frederic Bouchard, and for comments from anonymous reviewers. David Allison and Yann Klimentidis deserve thanks for involving me in a scientific collaboration that eventually led to this research. None of these individuals should be blamed for this paper's faults.

References

Abrams, Marshall. 2006. “Infinite Populations and Counterfactual Frequencies in Evolutionary Theory.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science C 37 (2): 256–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrams, Marshall. 2007. “Fitness and Propensity's Annulment?” Biology and Philosophy 22 (1): 115–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrams, Marshall. 2009. “Fitness ‘Kinematics’: Altruism, Biological Function, and Organism-Environment Histories.” Biology and Philosophy 24 (4): 487–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrams, Marshall. 2012a. “Mechanistic Probability.” Synthese 187 (2): 343–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrams, Marshall. 2012b. “Mechanistic Social Probability: How Individual Choices and Varying Circumstances Produce Stable Social Patterns.” In Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science, ed. Kincaid, Harold, 184–226. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cockerham, C. Clark. 1969. “Variance of Gene Frequencies.” Evolution 23 (March): 72–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cockerham, C. Clark. 1973. “Analyses of Gene Frequencies.” Genetics 74 (August): 679–700.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eagle, Antony. 2004. “Twenty-One Arguments against Propensity Analyses of Probability.” Erkenntnis 60 (3): 371–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Endler, John A. 1986. Natural Selection in the Wild. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Holsinger, Kent E., and Weir, Bruce S.. 2009. “Genetics in Geographically Structured Populations: Defining, Estimating and Interpreting.” Nature Reviews Genetics 10:639–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huff, Chad D., et al. 2012. “Crohn's Disease and Genetic Hitchhiking at IBD5.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 29 (1): 101–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ishida, Yoichi. 2009. “Sewall Wright and Gustave Malécot on Isolation by Distance.” Philosophy of Science 76:784–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David. 1973. Counterfactuals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lynch, Michael, and Walsh, Bruce. 1998. Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.Google Scholar
Matthen, Mohan. 2009. “Drift and ‘Statistically Abstractive Explanation.’” Philosophy of Science 76:464–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthen, Mohan, and Ariew, André. 2002. “Two Ways of Thinking about Fitness and Natural Selection.” Journal of Philosophy 99 (2): 55–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthen, Mohan, and Ariew, André. 2009. “Selection and Causation.” Philosophy of Science 76 (2): 201–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nei, Masatoshi. 1987. Molecular Evolutionary Genetics. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nei, Masatoshi, and Kumar, Sudhir. 2000. Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Northcott, Robert. 2010. “Walsh on Causes and Evolution.” Philosophy of Science 77 (3): 457–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pigliucci, Massimo, and Kaplan, Jonathan. 2006. Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, Grant. 2006. “Block Fitness.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (3): 484–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reisman, Kenneth, and Forber, Patrick. 2005. “Manipulation and the Causes of Evolution.” Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 1113–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, Jacob. 2010. “The Natural-Range Conception of Probability.” In Time, Chance, and Reduction: Philosophical Aspects of Statistical Mechanics, ed. Ernst, Gerhard and Hüttemann, Andreas, 71–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheinfeldt, Laura B., Biswas, Shameek, Madeoy, Jennifer, Connelly, Caitlin F., and Akey, Joshua M.. 2011. “Clusters of Adaptive Evolution in the Human Genome.” Frontiers in Genetics 2:50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shapiro, Larry, and Sober, Elliott. 2007. “Epiphenomenalism: The Dos and the Don’ts.” In Thinking about Causes: From Greek Philosophy to Modern Physics, ed. Wolters, Gereon and Machamer, Peter, 235–64. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2003. Bigger than Chaos: Understanding Complexity through Probability. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2011. “Probability out of Determinism.” In Probabilities in Physics, ed. Beisbart, Claus and Hartmann, Stephann, 339–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Fraassen, Bas C. 1980. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voight, Benjamin F., Kudaravalli, Sridhar, Wen, Xiaoquan, and Pritchard, Jonathan K.. 2006. “A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome.” PLoS Biology 4 (3): 446–58.Google ScholarPubMed
Walsh, Denis M. 2007. “The Pomp of Superfluous Causes: The Interpretation of Evolutionary Theory.” Philosophy of Science 74:281–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Denis M.. 2010. “Not a Sure Thing: Fitness, Probability, and Causation.” Philosophy of Science 77 (2): 141–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, Bruce S. 1996. Genetic Data Analysis II: Methods for Discrete Population Genetic Data. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.Google Scholar
Weir, Bruce S.. 2012. “Estimating F-Statistics: A Historical View.” Philosophy of Science, in this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weir, Bruce S., and Cockerham, C. Clark. 1984. “Estimating F-Statistics for the Analysis of Population Structure.” Evolution 38 (6): 1358–70.Google ScholarPubMed
Weir, Bruce S., and Hill, W. G.. 2002. “Estimating F-Statistics.” Annual Review of Genetics 36:721–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wright, Sewall. 1921. “Systems of Mating.” Pt. 1, “The Biometric Relations between Parent and Offspring.” Genetics 6:111–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Sewall. 1969. Evolution and the Genetics of Populations. Vol. 2, The Theory of Gene Frequencies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar