In Mendel's Mirror Philosophical Reflections on Biology

by Kitcher, Philip

• ISBN13: 9780195151787
• ISBN10: 019515178X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780195348552
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Philip Kitcher is one of the leading figures in the philosophy of sciencetoday. Here he collects, for the first time, many of his published articles onthe philosophy of biology, spanning from the mid-1980's to the present.The book's title refers to Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who was one ofthe first scientists to develop a theory of heredity. Mendel's work has beendeeply influential to our understanding of our selves and our world, just as thestudy of genetics today will have a profound and long-term impact on futurescientific research. Kitcher's articles cover a broad range of topics withsimilar philosophical and social significance: sociobiology, evolutionarypsychology, species, race, altrusim, genetic determinism, and the rebirth ofcreationism in Intelligent Design.Kitcher's work on the intersection of biology and the philosophy of science isboth unprecedented and wide-ranging, and will appeal not only to philosophers ofscience, but to scholars and students across disciplines.

Author Biography

Philip Kitcher is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and author of The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge(OUP, 1983); The Advancement of Science (OUP, 1993); and Science, Truth, and Democracy (OUP, 2001).

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences (1984)	3	(28)
The Hegemony of Molecular Biology (1999)	31	(14)
Darwin's Achievement (1985)	45	(49)
The Return of the Gene (1988; with Kim Sterelny)	94	(19)
Species (1984)	113	(22)
Some Puzzles about Species (1989)	135	(24)
Function and Design (1993)	159	(18)
The Evolution of Human Altruism (1993)	177	(17)
Evolution of Altruism in Optional and Compulsory Games (1995; with John Batali)	194	(18)
Infectious Ideas: Some Preliminary Explorations (2001)	212	(18)
Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture (1999)	230	(28)
Utopian Eugenics and Social Inequality (2000)	258	(25)
Battling the Undead: How (and How Not) to Resist Genetic Determinism (2000)	283	(18)
Developmental Decomposition and the Future of Human Behavioral Ecology (1990)	301	(20)
Four Ways of ``Biologicizing'' Ethics (1993)	321	(12)
Pop Sociobiology Reborn: The Evolutionary Psychology of Sex and Violence (2002; with A. Leah Vickers)	333	(23)
Born-Again Creationism (2002)	356	(23)
Index	379