In Mendel's Mirror Philosophical Reflections on Biology

by Kitcher, Philip

• ISBN13: 9780195151794
• ISBN10: 0195151798
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780195348552
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The essays collected here, written over a period of two decades, range over central themes in contemporary philosophy of biology. Philip Kitcher explores the relations of biology to the physical sciences, the theory of evolution by natural selection and the evidence for it, the concept of a biological species, the meaning of functional attributions, the possibility of altruism, and the evolution of culture. Besides these theoretical topics, he is also concerned with the impact of contemporary biology on important social issues, offering critiques of the biology of race, eugenics, the genetic determination of human behavior, human sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and the latest versions of "creation science." Offering a synthetic and distinctive view of the philosophy of biology, In Mendel's Mirror reveals the importance of theoretical issues in contemporary biology for philosophers, practicing biologists, and all those interested in the implications of biological research for our understanding of ourselves. Book jacket.

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
1. 1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences (1984)	3	(28)
2. The Hegemony of Molecular Biology (1999)	31	(14)
3. Darwin's Achievement (1985)	45	(49)
4. The Return of the Gene (1988; with Kim Sterelny)	94	(19)
5. Species (1984)	113	(22)
6. Some Puzzles about Species (1989)	135	(24)
7. Function and Design (1993)	159	(18)
8. The Evolution of Human Altruism (1993)	177	(17)
9. Evolution of Altruism in Optional and Compulsory Games (1995; with John Batali)	194	(18)
10. Infectious Ideas: Some Preliminary Explorations (2001)	212	(18)
11. Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture (1999)	230	(28)
12. Utopian Eugenics and Social Inequality (2000)	258	(25)
13. Battling the Undead: How (and How Not) to Resist Genetic Determinism (2000)	283	(18)
14. Developmental Decomposition and the Future of Human Behavioral Ecology (1990)	301	(20)
15. Four Ways of " Biologicizing" Ethics (1993)	321	(12)
16. Pop Sociobiology Reborn: The Evolutionary Psychology of Sex and Violence (2002; with A. Leah Vickers)	333	(23)
17. Born-Again Creationism (2002)	356	(23)
Index	379