Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives

by Edited by Rama S. Singh , Costas B. Krimbas , Diane B. Paul , John Beatty

• ISBN13: 9780521178310
• ISBN10: 0521178312
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is the second of two volumes published by Cambridge University Press in honor of Richard Lewontin. The first volume, Evolutionary Genetics from Molecules to Morphology, honors Lewontin's more technical contributions to genetics and evolutionary biology. This second volume of essays honors the philosophical, historical, and political dimensions of his work. Given the range of Lewontin's own contributions, it is fitting that the volume covers such a wide range of perspectives on modern biology. He was a very successful practitioner of evolutionary genetics, a rigorous critic of the practices of genetics and evolutionary biology, as well as an articulate analyst of the social, political, and economic contexts and consequences of genetic and evolutionary research. The volume contains an essay by Lewontin on Natural History and Formalism in Evolutionary Genetics, and an extended interview with Lewontin, covering the history of evolutionary genetics as seen from his perspective and exemplified by his career. The remaining chapters, contributed by former students, post-docs, colleagues, and collaborators, cover issues ranging from the history and conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology and genetics, to the implications of human genetic diversity, to the political economy of agriculture and public health.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Does culture evolve?

History of and in Evolutionary Biology

The nature of evolutionary biology: an interchange among

Hannah Arendt and Karl Popper: Darwinism, Fatalism and Totalitarianism

The genetics of experimental populations: L'Heritier and Teisser's population cages

Did eugenics rest on an elementary mistake?

Can the norm of reaction save the gene concept?

The apportionment of human diversity twenty-five years later

The Indian caste system: origin, evolution and impact on human diversity

Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology

Selfish genes or developmental systems?

The evolutionary definition of selective agency, the validation of the theory of hierarchical selection, and the fallacy of the selfish gene

Reductionism in genetics and the human genome project

Organism and environment

Levels and units of selection

In defense of neo-Darwinism: Popper's 'Darwinism as a metaphysical programme' revisited

The two faces of fitness

Evolvability: adaptation and modularity

Organism and environment revisited

An 'irreducible' component of cognition Massimo

The Politics of Evolutionary Biology

What causes cancer? A political history of recent debates

Battling the undead: how (and how not) to resist genetic determinism

The rise of neurogenetic determinism

Behavior genetics: Galen's prophecy or Malpighi's legacy?

Identity politics and biology

The agroecosystem: the modern vision in crisis, the alternative evolving

Political economy of agricultural genetics

The butterfly ex machina

Evoking transmutational dread: military and civilian uses of nuclear and genetic alchemies

From natural selection to natural construction to disciplining unruly complexity: the challenge of integrating ecological dynamics into evolutionary theory

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