Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology

These essays by leading scientists and philosophers address conceptual issues that arise in the theory and practice of evolutionary biology. The third edition of this widely used anthology has been substantially revised and updated. Four new sections have been added: on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race as social construction or biological reality. Other sections treat fitness, units of selection, adaptationism,reductionism, essentialism, species, phylogenetic inference, cultural evolution, and evolutionary ethics.Each of the twelve sections contains two or three essays that develop different views of the subject at hand. For example, the section on evolutionary psychology offers one essay by two founders of the field and another that questions its main tenets. One sign that a discipline is growing is that there are open questions, with multiple answers still in competition; the essays in this volume demonstrate that evolutionary biology and the philosophy of evolutionary biology are living, growing disciplines.Contributors:Robin O. Andreasen, Kwame Anthony Appiah, David A. Baum,John H. Beatty, David J. Buller, Leda Cosmides, James Donoghue, Steven J. Farris, Joseph Felsenstein, Susan K. Finsen, Joseph Fracchia, Stephen Jay Gould, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, David L. Hull,Philip Kitcher, R. C. Lewontin, Elisabeth Lloyd, Ernst Mayr, Michael Ruse, John Maynard Smith,Elliott Sober, John Tooby, C. Kenneth Waters, George C. Williams, David Sloan Wilson, E. O.

Wilson

Essays by philosophers and scientists address conceptual issues in evolutionary biology; a new edition substantially updated, with new sections on women in the evolutionary process, evolutionary psychology, laws in evolutionary theory, and race.

Booknews

About half of the 23 essays did not appear in the 1984 first edition; the others have been more or less revised to incorporate advances in the philosophy of biology. Among the topics are units of selection, phylogenetic inference, the reduction of Mendelian genetics to molecular biology, ethics and sociobiology, and cultural evolution and evolutionary epistemology. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Eliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor and William F. Vilas Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Nature of Selection (MIT Press, 1984), Reconstructing the Past (MIT Press, 1988), Philosophy of Biology, and, with David S. Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior.