Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T13:27:11.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Random Drift and the Omniscient Viewpoint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Roberta L. Millstein
Roberta L. Millstein*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Alexander Rosenberg (1994) claims that the omniscient viewpoint of the evolutionary process would have no need for the concept of random drift. However, his argument fails to take into account all of the processes which are considered to be instances of random drift. A consideration of these processes shows that random drift is not eliminable even given a position of omniscience. Furthermore, Rosenberg must take these processes into account in order to support his claims that evolution is deterministic and that evolutionary biology is an instrumental science.

Type
Philosophy of Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1996 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1996. , 1996 , pp. S10 - S18
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1996

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

†

Thanks to John Beatty, Carl Chung, Ron Giere, Kevin Lattery, Ken Waters and Chris Young for helpful discussion. This work was partially supported by a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship.

‡

Department of Philosophy, 355 Ford Hall, University of Minnesota, 224 Church St. S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455.

References

Beatty, J. (1984), “Chance and Natural Selection”, Philosophy of Science 51: 183–211.10.1086/289177CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J. (1992), “Random Drift”, in Keller, E. F. and Lloyd, E. A., (eds.), E. F. Keller and E. A. Lloyd, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 273–281.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. (1990), Adaptation and Environment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cain, A. J. (1951), “So-Called Non-Adaptive or Neutral Characters in Evolution”, Nature 168: 424.10.1038/168424a0CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cain, A. J. and Currey, J. D. (1963), “Area Effects in Cepea”, Cepea B 246: 1–81.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. ([1859] 1964), On the Origin of Species. Facsimile of the first edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, T. (1959), “In Discussion of Lamotte, M.”, Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 24: 85–86.Google Scholar
Dodson, E. O. and Dodson, P. (1985), Evolution: Process and Product. 3rd ed. Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmit.Google Scholar
Gigerenzer, G., Swijtink, Z., Porter, T., Daston, L., Beatty, J., and Krüger, L. (1989), The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511720482CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1983), “How to Carry Out the Adaptationist Program?”, American Naturalist 121: 324–334.10.1086/284064CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1994), Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar