Rapid biological advances and new standards of philosophical rigor are casting age-old questions about the nature and methodology of the biological sciences in a dramatic new light. Philosophy of Biology: An Anthology offers a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of the field's most significant works. The text is organized to provide readers at all levels with a thorough grounding in the general history, philosophy, and science behind debates that remain at the heart of the philosophy of biology. Addressing the field's central issues, sections draw on works relating to Darwinism and its influence on the biological sciences, evolution and chance, the unit of selection debate, adaptationism, evolutionary psychology, and the burgeoning science of evolutionary developmental biology, to name just a few. Editors' introductions and further reading material throughout the text - combined with the readings themselves - provide novices with a solid basis on which to pursue further research in philosophy of biology. Comprehensive in scope, Philosophy of Biology: An Anthology offers readers an accessible gateway into a field of study that holds the most crucial insights and implications into our understanding of the nature and methodology of the biological sciences.

Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy, Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Philosophy of Biology at Duke University. He has published 11 books on the philosophy of science including The Philosophy of Biology: A Contemporary Introduction (2007) with Daniel McShea. In 1993, he won the Lakatos Prize in the Philosophy of Science and in 2007 was the National Phi Beta Kappa Rommell lecturer in philosophy. Robert Arp is Research Associate with the National Center for Biomedical Ontology at the University of Buffalo and works with the Ontology Research Group at the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences in Buffalo, New York. A PhD in Philosophy from Saint Louis University, he has published in the areas of philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind, and biomedical ontology.

Leseprobe

Personal Acknowledgments Source Acknowledgments General Introduction: A Short History of Philosophy of Biology: Alex Rosenberg and Robert Arp Part I: Basic Principles and Proofs of Darwinism Part II: Evolution and Chance Part III: The Tautology Problem Part IV: Adaptationism Part V: Biological Function and Teleology Part VI: Evolutionary Developmental Biology Part VII: Reductionism and the Biological Sciences Part VIII: Species and Classification Problems Part IX: The Units of Selection Debate Part X: Sociobiology and Ethics Part XI: Evolutionary Psychology Part XII: Design and Creationism