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Large-Scale Biological Entities and the Evolutionary Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Nile Eldredge
Nile Eldredge*
Affiliation:
The American Museum of Natural History
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Extract

I wish to pose an instance in which philosophy has made an explicit and I feel, very useful contribution to the resolution of a set of scientific problems. Some of this work has been done by philosophers with a biological bent, and some by biologists with a philosophical bent. Whether the upshot is philosophy of biology, I cannot say. But recent conceptual advances in the ontology of what we might call “large biological things” holds a number of practical consequences for macroevolutionary theory.

Let us begin by asking what is “macroevolution” and, consequently, macroevolutionary theory? The “Modern Synthesis“, of course, maintains thatvthe neo-Darwinian paradigm (i.e., natural selection united with a’ coherent theory of the principles of heredity) is both necessary and sufficient to account for most evolutionary phenomena, including macroevolution.

Type
Part XIII. Invited Paper: Philosophy of Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1984 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1984 , 1984 , pp. 550 - 566
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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