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3 - Natural Selection, Teleology, and Chance in Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2023

Mariusz Tabaczek
Affiliation:
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome
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Summary

Chapter three engages in the investigation of the meaning and role of natural selection, teleology and chance in evolutionary processes. From Aristotle and Aquinas, through Darwin and the twentieth-century evolutionary synthesis, to the most current philosophy of evolutionary biology, the fate of the notion of goal-directedness is traced and it is defended as indispensable and intrinsically related to chance in processes that affect the fittingness of organisms, which is tested by natural selection.

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Theistic Evolution
A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective
, pp. 92 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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