Phenotypic plasticity integrates the insights of ecological genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory. Plasticity research asks foundational questions about how living organisms are capable of variation in their genetic makeup and in their responses to environmental factors. For instance, how do novel adaptive phenotypes originate? How do organisms detect and respond to stressful environments? What is the balance between genetic or natural constraints (such as gravity) and natural selection? The author begins by defining phenotypic plasticity and detailing its history, including (...) important experiments and methods of statistical and graphical analysis. He then provides extended examples of the molecular basis of plasticity, the plasticity of development, the ecology of plastic responses, and the role of costs and constraints in the evolution of plasticity. A brief epilogue looks at how plasticity studies shed light on the nature/nurture debate in the popular media. (shrink)

Science and philosophy have a very long history, dating back at least to the 16th and 17th centuries, when the first scientist-philosophers, such as Bacon, Galilei, and Newton, were beginning the process of turning natural philosophy into science. Contemporary relationships between the two fields are still to some extent marked by the distrust that maintains the divide between the so-called “two cultures.” An increasing number of philosophers, however, are making conceptual contributions to sciences ranging from quantum mechanics to evolutionary biology, (...) and a few scientists are conducting research relevant to classically philosophical fields of inquiry, such as consciousness and moral decision-making. This article will introduce readers to the borderlands between science and philosophy, beginning with a brief description of what philosophy of science is about, and including a discussion of how the two disciplines can fruitfully interact not only at the level of scholarship, but also when it comes to controversies surrounding public understanding of science. (shrink)

Twenty years have passed since Gould and Lewontin published their critique of ‘the adaptationist program’ – the tendency of some evolutionary biologists to assume, rather than demonstrate, the operation of natural selection. After the ‘Spandrels paper’, evolutionists were more careful about producing just-so stories based on selection, and paid more attention to a panoply of other processes. Then came reactions against the excesses of the anti-adaptationist movement, which ranged from a complete dismissal of Gould and Lewontin’s contribution to a positive (...) call to overcome the problems. We now have an excellent opportunity for finally affirming a more balanced and pluralistic approach to the study of evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Evolutionary biology is a field currently animated by much discussion concerning its conceptual foundations. On the one hand, we have supporters of a classical view of evolutionary theory, whose backbone is provided by population genetics and the so-called Modern Synthesis (MS). On the other hand, a number of researchers are calling for an Extended Synthe- sis (ES) that takes seriously both the limitations of the MS (such as its inability to incorporate developmental biology) and recent empirical and theoretical research on (...) issues such as evolvability, modularity, and self-organization. In this article, I engage in an in-depth commentary of an influential paper by population geneticist Michael Lynch, which I take to be the best defense of the MS-population genetics position published so far. I show why I think that Lynch’s arguments are wanting and propose a modification of evolutionary theory that retains but greatly expands on population genetics. (shrink)

Introduction : science versus pseudoscience and the "demarcation problem" -- Hard science, soft science -- Almost science -- Pseudoscience -- Blame the media? -- Debates on science : the rise of think tanks and the decline of public intellectuals -- Science and politics : the case of global warming -- Science in the courtroom : the case against intelligent design -- From superstition to natural philosophy -- From natural philosophy to modern science -- The science wars I : do we (...) trust science too much? -- The science wars II : do we trust science too little? -- Who's your expert? -- Conclusion : so, what is science after all? (shrink)

The idea of phenotypic novelty appears throughout the evolutionary literature. Novelties have been defined so broadly as to make the term meaningless and so narrowly as to apply only to a limited number of spectacular structures. Here I examine some of the available definitions of phenotypic novelty and argue that the modern synthesis is ill equipped at explaining novelties. I then discuss three frameworks that may help biologists get a better insight of how novelties arise during evolution but warn that (...) these frameworks should be considered in addition to, and not as potential substitutes of, the modern synthesis. †To contact the author, please write to: Departments of Ecology and Evolution and Philosophy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Philosophy has been a public endeavor since its origins in ancient Greece, India, and China. However, recent years have seen the development of a new type of public philosophy conducted by both academics and non- professionals. The new public philosophy manifests itself in a range of modalities, from the publication of magazines and books for the general public to a variety of initiatives that exploit the power and flexibility of social networks and new media. In this paper we examine the (...) phenomenon of public philosophy in its several facets, and investigate whether and in what sense it is itself a mix of philosophical practice and teaching. We conclude with a number of suggestions to academic colleagues on why and how to foster further growth of public philosophy for the benefit of society at large and of the discipline itself. (shrink)

Sewall Wright introduced the metaphor of evolution on “adaptive landscapes” in a pair of papers published in 1931 and 1932. The metaphor has been one of the most influential in modern evolutionary biology, although recent theoretical advancements show that it is deeply flawed and may have actually created research questions that are not, in fact, fecund. In this paper I examine in detail what Wright actually said in the 1932 paper, as well as what he thought of the matter at (...) the very end of his career, in 1988. While the metaphor is flawed, some of the problems which Wright was attempting to address are still with us today, and are in the process of being reformulated as part of a forthcoming Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. (shrink)

Thought experiments are cheap and popular, but how do they work?

The concepts of reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity help us better understand what a biological trait is.

An exploration of the relationship between secular humanism and politics, from a liberal perspective.

Ever since Darwin a great deal of the conceptual history of biology may be read as a struggle between two philosophical positions: reductionism and holism. On the one hand, we have the reductionist claim that evolution has to be understood in terms of changes at the fundamental causal level of the gene. As Richard Dawkins famously put it, organisms are just ‘lumbering robots’ in the service of their genetic masters. On the other hand, there is a long holistic tradition that (...) focuses on the complexity of developmental systems, on the non-linearity of gene– environment interactions, and on multi-level selective processes to argue that the full story of biology is a bit more complicated than that. Reductionism can marshal on its behalf the spectacular successes of genetics and molecular biology throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Holism has built on the development of entirely new disciplines and conceptual frameworks over the past few decades, including evo-devo and phenotypic plasticity. Yet, a number of biologists are still actively looking for a way out of the reductionism–holism counterposition, often mentioning the word ‘emergence’ as a way to deal with the conundrum. This paper briefly examines the philosophical history of the concept of emergence, distinguishes between epistemic and ontological accounts of it, and comments on conceptions of emergence that can actually be useful for practising evolutionary biologists. (shrink)

The science and philosophy of xenophobic behavior.

A critical examination of the dispute about the existence and significance of "plasticity genes.".

Commentary on research on butterflies' eyespots as a model in evolutionary developmental biology.

Can Wittgenstein's famous family resemblance concept be applied to resolve the problem of defining species in biology?

Crossing the cultural divide, half a century after C.P. Snow.

On the status of hypotheses in science, and why scientists would be better off asking questions.

Taking a quick look at game theory, rational egoism and the evolution of fairness.

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of Heidegger's philosophy and reveal a possibility of an other beginning, of which we can have only a premonition for now. The paper is very much a preparation for work which is currently underway.

The articles in this issue reflect the results of the 25th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology on ‘‘The Meaning of ‘Theory’ in Biology’’ held at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Altenberg, Austria, 30 June–3 July, 2011.

The paper is devoted to Richard Rorty’s thought, with the aim of exploiting a certain contention of his and directing it, as it were, against Rorty himself. Here is the contention: he thinks that – when it comes to metaphysical questions such as realism and anti-realism – the only kind of argument a pragmatist has at her disposal is rhetorical. Following the lines of the well-known wager Blaise Pascal laid on the belief in the existence of God, I will try (...) to show that the realist can avail herself of a rhetorical argument in favor of her view which is more convincing than any rhetorical argument of a Rortyan kind, while abiding by the Rortyan maxim according to which ‘What has no bearing on our practice, shouldn’t have a bearing on philosophy’. This will allow me to challenge Rorty standing on his home ground. (shrink)

While universalism is rooted in the very ideology of Islam and is grounded in the Qur’an, especially through the concepts of fiṭra, amr and rūḥ, cosmopolitanism is an essential characteristic of classical Muslim empires: both the Caliphate-Imamate and empires, like the Ottoman or the Mughal ones, were a melting pot of races, languages and customs. The Caliphate-Imamate was by nature supranational and for centuries there was no idea of the nation in Islam. Contemporary nationalism, local or global, have represented a (...) disrupting more than a unifying force and have produced many failed states. In the present situation of crisis of the Muslim world, Puritanism and blind adherence to past tradition have paved the way for the revival of intolerance. Conservative or even extremist Islamist movements have assumed the deformed perspective of retrospective utopia, convinced that it is sufficient to reproduce the conditions of the Prophet’s time to solve all problems of Muslim societies. Hence, the Islamic state and Caliphate’s issues must be re-discussed from new perspectives, by recovering the potentials of universalism and cosmopolitanism in the tradition. It is central today the role of civil society, wherein Islamic universalism and cosmopolitanism could find their natural space, and the same goes for the role of citizenship. Reform requires a re-consideration of classical Islamic juridical and political thought patterns, which this chapter aims to do by, first, focalizing certain paradigms and concepts, and by, second, problematizing the modern meanings given to these paradigms and concepts. At the closure, I contend that it is in civil society that traditional meanings of universalism and cosmopolitanism can flourish again for functional political thought and praxis. (shrink)

The Hamiltonian structure of General Relativity (GR), for both metric and tetrad gravity in a definite continuous family of space-times, is fully exploited in order to show that: i) the "Hole Argument" can be bypassed by means of a specific "physical individuation" of point-events of the space-time manifold M^4 in terms of the "autonomous degrees of freedom" of the vacuum gravitational field (Dirac observables), while the "Leibniz equivalence" is reduced to differences in the "non-inertial appearances" (connected to gauge variables) of (...) the same phenomena. ii) the chrono-geometric structure of a solution of Einstein equations for given, gauge-fixed, initial data (a "3-geometry" satisfying the relevant constraints on the Cauchy surface), can be interpreted as an "unfolding" in mathematical global time of a sequence of "achronal 3-spaces" characterized by "dynamically determined conventions" about distant simultaneity. This result stands out as an important conceptual difference with respect to the standard chrono-geometrical view of Special Relativity (SR) and allows, in a specific sense, for an "endurantist" interpretations of ordinary physical objects in GR. (shrink)

This paper is about the development of a face-to-face collaborative technology to support shifting attitudes of participants in conflict via a narration task. The work is based on two cultural elements: conflict resolution theory and the design of a collaboration enforcing interface designed specifically for the task. The general claim is that participants may achieve a greater understanding of and appreciation for the other’s viewpoint under conditions that support partaking in a tangible joint task and creating a shared narration. Specifically, (...) a co-located interface for producing a joint narration as a tool for favoring reconciliation is presented and discussed. The process based on this technology implicitly includes classical steps in conflict resolution approaches, such as escalation and de-escalation. Our goal is to show that this interface is effective and constitutes an alternative to a typical face-to-face moderated discussion. (shrink)

The debate about the levels of selection has been one of the most controversial both in evolutionary biology and in philosophy of science. Okasha’s book makes the sort of contribution that simply will not be able to be ignored by anyone interested in this field for many years to come. However, my interest here is in highlighting some examples of how Okasha goes about discussing his material to suggest that his book is part of an increasingly interesting trend that sees (...) scientists and philosophers coming together to build a broadened concept of “theory” through a combination of standard mathematical treatments and conceptual analyses. Given the often contentious history of the relationship between philosophy and science, such trend cannot but be welcome. (shrink)

Metaphors play a crucial role in both science in particular and human discourse in gen- eral. Plato’s story of the cave—about people shackled to a wall and incapable of perceiv- ing the world as it really is—has stimulated thinking about epistemology and the nature of reality for more than two millennia. But metaphors can also be misleading: being too taken with Plato’s story has cost philosophers endless discussions about how to access the world “as it is,” until Kant showed us (...) that it is just not going to happen, ever. (shrink)

It is a commonplace to maintain that technology will never be able to reproduce a natural object in full detail. Nevertheless, if one tries to rigorously demonstrate the methodological foundation on which such an assumption is based, one finds a number of interesting problems to clarify. This paper attempts to provide a general framework for the understanding of naturoids, arguing that every naturoid — and the cognitive model upon which it is based — is the result of a reduction in (...) the complexity of natural objects due to an unavoidable multiple selection process. Naturoids take on their own new complexity, which leads to a transfiguration of the natural exemplars and their performances. On the one hand, this transfiguration poses severe problems for those who try to gain knowledge from naturoids regarding the analogous natural objects. On the other hand, a generalized replacement of natural objects and processes with naturoids will change our way of looking at nature. Therefore, the technology of naturoids could develop through successive generations, each of which would take as exemplars already artificialized objects, giving rise to a new kind of evolution. (shrink)

Is life plausible? WeU, it's more than plausible, it has actually happened! What we need to ask, rather, is whether our explanations for how life came about and diversified are plausible. So the title of Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart's book implies the wrong question. Despite that. The Plausibility of Life makes for informative and enjoyable reading, and the issues the authors raise are worthy of attention.

The good Doctor has a lot to say about philosophy.