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Philosophy of Biology
An essential introduction to the philosophy of biology
This is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible introduction to the philosophy of biology written by a leading authority on the subject. Geared to philosophers, biologists, and students of both, the book provides sophisticated and innovative coverage of the central topics and many of the latest developments in the field. Emphasizing connections between biological theories and other areas of philosophy, and carefully explaining both philosophical and biological terms, Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses the relation between philosophy and science; examines the role of laws, mechanistic explanation, and idealized models in biological theories; describes evolution by natural selection; and assesses attempts to extend Darwin's mechanism to explain changes in ideas, culture, and other phenomena. Further topics include functions and teleology, individuality and organisms, species, the tree of life, and human nature. The book closes with detailed, cutting-edge treatments of the evolution of cooperation, of information in biology, and of the role of communication in living systems at all scales.
Authoritative and up-to-date, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the important philosophical issues raised by the biological sciences.
This is a concise, comprehensive, and accessible introduction to the philosophy of biology written by a leading authority on the subject. Geared to philosophers, biologists, and students of both, the book provides sophisticated and innovative coverage of the central topics and many of the latest developments in the field. Emphasizing connections between biological theories and other areas of philosophy, and carefully explaining both philosophical and biological terms, Peter Godfrey-Smith discusses the relation between philosophy and science; examines the role of laws, mechanistic explanation, and idealized models in biological theories; describes evolution by natural selection; and assesses attempts to extend Darwin's mechanism to explain changes in ideas, culture, and other phenomena. Further topics include functions and teleology, individuality and organisms, species, the tree of life, and human nature. The book closes with detailed, cutting-edge treatments of the evolution of cooperation, of information in biology, and of the role of communication in living systems at all scales.
Authoritative and up-to-date, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the important philosophical issues raised by the biological sciences.
200 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2013
41 people are currently reading
671 people want to read
About the author
Peter Godfrey-Smith
19 books692 followersI am currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, CUNY (City University of New York), and Professor of History and Philosophy of Science (half-time) at the University of Sydney.
I grew up in Sydney, Australia. My undergraduate degree is from the University of Sydney, and I have a PhD in philosophy from UC San Diego. I taught at Stanford University between 1991 and 2003, and then combined a half-time post at the Australian National University and a visiting position at Harvard for a few years. I moved to Harvard full-time and was Professor there from 2006 to 2011, before coming to the CUNY Graduate Center. I took up a half-time position in the HPS program at the University of Sydney in 2015.
My main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. I also work on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. I’ve written four books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), which won the 2010 Lakatos Award, and Philosophy of Biology, released in 2014 by Princeton.
My photos and videos have appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Boston Globe, Boston Review, and elsewhere.
I grew up in Sydney, Australia. My undergraduate degree is from the University of Sydney, and I have a PhD in philosophy from UC San Diego. I taught at Stanford University between 1991 and 2003, and then combined a half-time post at the Australian National University and a visiting position at Harvard for a few years. I moved to Harvard full-time and was Professor there from 2006 to 2011, before coming to the CUNY Graduate Center. I took up a half-time position in the HPS program at the University of Sydney in 2015.
My main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. I also work on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. I’ve written four books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), which won the 2010 Lakatos Award, and Philosophy of Biology, released in 2014 by Princeton.
My photos and videos have appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Boston Globe, Boston Review, and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 20, 2024
3.5 για ελλειπή ανάπτυξη κάποιων σημαντικών θεμάτων και χρήση γλώσσας. Έπρεπε να έχει το διπλάσιο μέγεθος κανονικά.
Ωστόσο για πρώτη επαφή είναι μια χαρά.
Ωστόσο για πρώτη επαφή είναι μια χαρά.
January 9, 2023
Owing to the sheer wonder of the phenomenon we call life, the philosophy of biology promises to remain an ever-vital topic. Traditionally, academic philosophers have concentrated on physics and the hard sciences in view of their greater prestige but the time is ripe to open ourselves to a softer field, now that physics itself has attained to maturity after the revolution of atomic physics a century ago. Indeed, the question as to the connection between the mechanistic world-view so typical of the physicist and the domain of life has always inspired debate and is as topical as ever (cf. our recent reviews of Stuart Glennan’s The New Mechanical Philosophy, here, and Stavros Ioannidis and Stathis Psillos’ Mechanisms in Science: Method or Metaphysics?, here). But, as a rule, it is always salutary to confide in the best authorities, which in this case would mean those who occupy themselves with the study of biology proper as a career. After having just taken a look at the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr’s speculations in a more philosophical vein in his Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (see our immediately preceding review, here), let us come around to what a more self-consciously professional member of the philosophical community has to say on the subject, in his Philosophy of Biology, from the series of Princeton Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy published by the Princeton University Press in 2014.
After an introductory reflection in chapter one on the nature of philosophy in connection with biology, chapter two on laws, mechanisms and models takes up the broadest questions in the field. Here is how Godfrey-Smith characterizes the role of law in biology, which is to be contrasted with its role in physics:
Putting things together, there are two kinds of generalizations in biology that both look a bit like laws. First, there are conditional statements derived from models—these are not beholden to historical contingency, are often very abstract, and tend to idealize to some extent. Second, there are general statements about what actual organisms are like—spiders are carnivorous, Mendel’s First Law—that depend on historical contingencies and usually have exceptions. [pp. 25-26]
Godfrey-Smith the philosopher of science seems more able to detach himself from prevailing ideological trends than are practicing biologists, who are often committed to an orthodox viewpoint and want to extend it beyond its range of applicability, as for instance in chapter three on evolution and natural selection (the malady is not confined to biologists, but affects natural scientists whatever their field). The following passage is illustrative:
At one stage in the 20th century it must indeed have seemed that everything was turning out to be variation and selection. The argument is harder to make now. The Thorndike-Skinner theory of learning and Popper’s theory of science are not widely accepted in their respective fields. Both are oversimplified, but that is not the heart of their problems. They overstate the importance of pure trial and error. Sometimes variation and selection at one time scale builds another system that can adapt to the world in ways that are not made up of more variation and selection. Evolution by natural selection built our brains, and maybe nothing else could. But once it has done so, our brains can do things that are smarter than just throwing out new behaviors – or beliefs – and seeing if they work. We can engage in logical reasoning and planning (at least some of the time), and shape ideas and behaviors without exposing them at every step. Sometimes variation and selection builds more variation and selection, as in the vertebrate immune system. [p. 47]
Chapter four continues the exploration of basic concepts in biology with an examination of adaptation, construction and function (in relation to teleology). Godfrey-Smith does not rest content with the classic views of Darwin but brings the discussion up to date with recent authorities, such as Richard Lewontin. With these concepts in place, one is prepared to investigate the meaning of individuality in chapter five. That the subject is non-trivial emerges from the statement that ‘The surprising idea here is that it is not true that a typical organism is a metabolic whole that also reproduces as a unit’ [p. 78] – what is counter-intuitive to the way we normally think!
But another topic even more revealing of the need for careful delineation of concepts is the proper definition of the gene in chapter six. One has to keep in mind both what genes are – as constituent parts of the genetic code located physically on the chromosome – and what they do, or their causal role [p. 86]. The latter can be disclosed by judicious intervention. Now for Godfrey-Smith’s understanding, which agrees with current thinking on the frontier of knowledge:
Fisher was writing before the discovery of the structure and role of DNA. The contrast he has in mind was with views in which inheritance involved a literal blending of material from the two parents, like mixing paint. This would lead to variation, the fuel for evolution, being quickly lost. Genetic inheritance did turn out to be ‘particulate’, but the particles are the single nucleotides. A single nucleotide can be seen as a gene in special cases, but single nucleotides do not play most of the roles that genes play in evolution or development – there are only four of them, for instance – and there is no larger unit that is ‘particulate’ in the way Fisher supposed. The newer picture of genetic systems is one in which the match between a model of evolution as a competition between alleles and what really happens in genetic systems is more partial. The point is not merely that genes are more indefinite and blurry entities than had been supposed; it has to do with why they are less particle-like. Genomes, at least in organisms like us, are more organized entities, with large proportions of an organism’s DNA engaged in subtle processes of regulation of the expression of ‘coding’ regions. New genomes are made by combining large chunks of this genetic material from the genomes of each parent, and this is not much like shuffling a collection of alleles and stringing them together in a line. [p. 97]
Likewise chapter seven: in view of horizontal gene transfer, Darwin’s picture of the tree of life (which was so conducive to his epochal discovery of common descent of all extant organisms) has had to be substantially revised in light of recent scientific work. Godfrey-Smith nicely sets out the issues that accompany the transition from a typological to a phylogenetic view of species. Chapter eight on evolution and social behavior first considers cooperation and altruism in general, then in succeeding sections applies to human societies and cultural evolution (such as the adoption of fire and cooked food). The final concise chapter nine addresses the role of information in biology – what clearly has always been relevant but looks to be a recurrent theme in which real progress might be in the offing, in the era of big data – starting from an interesting analysis of mutual information in terms of David Lewis’ theory of communication, in which one distinguishes the parts played by the sender and receiver [p. 148f]. Godfrey-Smith then applies the idea to the case of biology.
What can one take away from the present work, which at just 187 pages will be a quick read? Things are always more complex in biology than what most of us are used to suppose, accustomed as we are to what we typically encounter in everyday life. Biologists, however, study real organisms in actual environments and have to deal with all the complications that nature has brought forth over the course of deep evolutionary time: where to draw the line between individual and group may not be so clear in the case of algae colonies or social insects; some species may display a different arrangement of mating types than the male and female we are familiar with, or may reproduce asexually; our understanding of what a gene consists in has had to be revised numerous times since Mendel postulated particulate inheritance, and so forth. Here, the philosopher of science’s analytical mindset helps to evoke conceptual clarity, once one has been confronted with the full range of possibilities displayed by the phenomena. Also, the occasional mathematical insets can be interesting, if tangential to the main course of exposition.
Three stars. Clever, but no real depth. As such, typifies much of what passes for philosophy of science these days, or academic writing in general. Ernst Mayr comes to the philosophy of biology from the side of biology, Peter Godfrey-Smith from that of the professional philosopher. How does this characteristic difference manifest itself? In general, Mayr speaks with more authority, Godfrey-Smith with more ingenuity in combining ideas. Nonetheless, welcome – why shouldn’t we pitch a broad tent? Godfrey-Smith, after all, certainly measures up to the standard of workmanship expected of an academic, and has composed other interesting writings along similar lines, such as Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind (2010) and Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016), just to mention two among several publications. Perhaps we shall get to these before long!
After an introductory reflection in chapter one on the nature of philosophy in connection with biology, chapter two on laws, mechanisms and models takes up the broadest questions in the field. Here is how Godfrey-Smith characterizes the role of law in biology, which is to be contrasted with its role in physics:
Putting things together, there are two kinds of generalizations in biology that both look a bit like laws. First, there are conditional statements derived from models—these are not beholden to historical contingency, are often very abstract, and tend to idealize to some extent. Second, there are general statements about what actual organisms are like—spiders are carnivorous, Mendel’s First Law—that depend on historical contingencies and usually have exceptions. [pp. 25-26]
Godfrey-Smith the philosopher of science seems more able to detach himself from prevailing ideological trends than are practicing biologists, who are often committed to an orthodox viewpoint and want to extend it beyond its range of applicability, as for instance in chapter three on evolution and natural selection (the malady is not confined to biologists, but affects natural scientists whatever their field). The following passage is illustrative:
At one stage in the 20th century it must indeed have seemed that everything was turning out to be variation and selection. The argument is harder to make now. The Thorndike-Skinner theory of learning and Popper’s theory of science are not widely accepted in their respective fields. Both are oversimplified, but that is not the heart of their problems. They overstate the importance of pure trial and error. Sometimes variation and selection at one time scale builds another system that can adapt to the world in ways that are not made up of more variation and selection. Evolution by natural selection built our brains, and maybe nothing else could. But once it has done so, our brains can do things that are smarter than just throwing out new behaviors – or beliefs – and seeing if they work. We can engage in logical reasoning and planning (at least some of the time), and shape ideas and behaviors without exposing them at every step. Sometimes variation and selection builds more variation and selection, as in the vertebrate immune system. [p. 47]
Chapter four continues the exploration of basic concepts in biology with an examination of adaptation, construction and function (in relation to teleology). Godfrey-Smith does not rest content with the classic views of Darwin but brings the discussion up to date with recent authorities, such as Richard Lewontin. With these concepts in place, one is prepared to investigate the meaning of individuality in chapter five. That the subject is non-trivial emerges from the statement that ‘The surprising idea here is that it is not true that a typical organism is a metabolic whole that also reproduces as a unit’ [p. 78] – what is counter-intuitive to the way we normally think!
But another topic even more revealing of the need for careful delineation of concepts is the proper definition of the gene in chapter six. One has to keep in mind both what genes are – as constituent parts of the genetic code located physically on the chromosome – and what they do, or their causal role [p. 86]. The latter can be disclosed by judicious intervention. Now for Godfrey-Smith’s understanding, which agrees with current thinking on the frontier of knowledge:
Fisher was writing before the discovery of the structure and role of DNA. The contrast he has in mind was with views in which inheritance involved a literal blending of material from the two parents, like mixing paint. This would lead to variation, the fuel for evolution, being quickly lost. Genetic inheritance did turn out to be ‘particulate’, but the particles are the single nucleotides. A single nucleotide can be seen as a gene in special cases, but single nucleotides do not play most of the roles that genes play in evolution or development – there are only four of them, for instance – and there is no larger unit that is ‘particulate’ in the way Fisher supposed. The newer picture of genetic systems is one in which the match between a model of evolution as a competition between alleles and what really happens in genetic systems is more partial. The point is not merely that genes are more indefinite and blurry entities than had been supposed; it has to do with why they are less particle-like. Genomes, at least in organisms like us, are more organized entities, with large proportions of an organism’s DNA engaged in subtle processes of regulation of the expression of ‘coding’ regions. New genomes are made by combining large chunks of this genetic material from the genomes of each parent, and this is not much like shuffling a collection of alleles and stringing them together in a line. [p. 97]
Likewise chapter seven: in view of horizontal gene transfer, Darwin’s picture of the tree of life (which was so conducive to his epochal discovery of common descent of all extant organisms) has had to be substantially revised in light of recent scientific work. Godfrey-Smith nicely sets out the issues that accompany the transition from a typological to a phylogenetic view of species. Chapter eight on evolution and social behavior first considers cooperation and altruism in general, then in succeeding sections applies to human societies and cultural evolution (such as the adoption of fire and cooked food). The final concise chapter nine addresses the role of information in biology – what clearly has always been relevant but looks to be a recurrent theme in which real progress might be in the offing, in the era of big data – starting from an interesting analysis of mutual information in terms of David Lewis’ theory of communication, in which one distinguishes the parts played by the sender and receiver [p. 148f]. Godfrey-Smith then applies the idea to the case of biology.
What can one take away from the present work, which at just 187 pages will be a quick read? Things are always more complex in biology than what most of us are used to suppose, accustomed as we are to what we typically encounter in everyday life. Biologists, however, study real organisms in actual environments and have to deal with all the complications that nature has brought forth over the course of deep evolutionary time: where to draw the line between individual and group may not be so clear in the case of algae colonies or social insects; some species may display a different arrangement of mating types than the male and female we are familiar with, or may reproduce asexually; our understanding of what a gene consists in has had to be revised numerous times since Mendel postulated particulate inheritance, and so forth. Here, the philosopher of science’s analytical mindset helps to evoke conceptual clarity, once one has been confronted with the full range of possibilities displayed by the phenomena. Also, the occasional mathematical insets can be interesting, if tangential to the main course of exposition.
Three stars. Clever, but no real depth. As such, typifies much of what passes for philosophy of science these days, or academic writing in general. Ernst Mayr comes to the philosophy of biology from the side of biology, Peter Godfrey-Smith from that of the professional philosopher. How does this characteristic difference manifest itself? In general, Mayr speaks with more authority, Godfrey-Smith with more ingenuity in combining ideas. Nonetheless, welcome – why shouldn’t we pitch a broad tent? Godfrey-Smith, after all, certainly measures up to the standard of workmanship expected of an academic, and has composed other interesting writings along similar lines, such as Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind (2010) and Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (2016), just to mention two among several publications. Perhaps we shall get to these before long!
Read
August 19, 2023Pocas introducciones hay a este tema tan candente como la que ofrece Godfrey-Smith en este libro. Aunque trata temas por naturaleza complejos, algunos de los cuales yo ignoro profundamente, rara vez he tenido la sensación de estar perdido y el autor logra bien ese equilibrio entre divulgación científica y reflexión filosófica, que es a fin de cuentas en lo que consiste la filosofía de la biología como disciplina. Es un campo que me atrae mucho, así como la ciencia a él asociada, y seguiré investigando, ahora con una idea mucho más clara y con un bajage firme, todo gracias a este libro.
May 10, 2018
Το βιβλίο αυτό με δυσκόλεψε πολύ. Για μήνες το έσερνα μαζί μου γκρινιάζοντας ότι κουβαλάω μαζί μου το "βασανιστήριο"αλλά όμως επέμεινα μέχρι να το τελειώσω. Μου έδωσε μια πολύ διαφορετική ιδέα της βιολογίας, αμφισβήτησε έννοιες που θεωρούσα αυτονόητες (πχ αρμοστικότητα, είδος), έβαλε μέσα περισσότερα μαθηματικά από όσα είχα δει στη σχολή (είναι προαιρετικά μην ανησυχείτε), και μου έδειξε μια εντελώς νέα οπτική πολλών πτυχών της επιστήμης μου.
Δε ξέρω πόσο δύσκολο θα ήταν το βιβλίο για κάποιον μη βιολόγο, ούτε αν είναι πλήρες όσον αφορά το περιεχόμενο που καλύπτει μιας και είναι το πρώτο βιβλίο φιλοσοφίας της βιολογίας που διαβάζω, αλλά μπορώ να πω ότι σα σύνολο μου άρεσε και θα ξαναδιαβάσω μέρη του (και κάποια ακόμη από τη βιβλιογραφία του). Σίγουρα με δυσκόλεψε πάρα πολύ, και χρειαζόμουν πολύ καθαρό μυαλό για να ασχοληθώ μαζί του αν ήθελα να κατανοήσω πράγματα (μερικά νομίζω δε τα κατανόησα και ποτέ), αλλά χαίρομαι που επέμεινα ως το τέλος.
Δε ξέρω πόσο δύσκολο θα ήταν το βιβλίο για κάποιον μη βιολόγο, ούτε αν είναι πλήρες όσον αφορά το περιεχόμενο που καλύπτει μιας και είναι το πρώτο βιβλίο φιλοσοφίας της βιολογίας που διαβάζω, αλλά μπορώ να πω ότι σα σύνολο μου άρεσε και θα ξαναδιαβάσω μέρη του (και κάποια ακόμη από τη βιβλιογραφία του). Σίγουρα με δυσκόλεψε πάρα πολύ, και χρειαζόμουν πολύ καθαρό μυαλό για να ασχοληθώ μαζί του αν ήθελα να κατανοήσω πράγματα (μερικά νομίζω δε τα κατανόησα και ποτέ), αλλά χαίρομαι που επέμεινα ως το τέλος.
June 25, 2015
This book is a good reference for those wanting to explore some of the main areas in philosophy of biology, but it is quite dense and moves quickly, so it would be of most use to someone already familiar with the basics of the discipline.
October 30, 2016
Συνοπτική και κατατοπιστική συλλογή των φιλοσοφικών ιδεών που διέπουν την επιστημονική σκέψη στη Βιολογία, τον τελευταίο αιώνα. Όμορφη ομαδοποίηση σε κεφάλαια, αλλά κάποια θέματα τα προσπερνάει πολύ γρήγορα.
January 21, 2022
thought i might read a light review and this was fine for that purpose. strange priorities, baffling omissions
July 11, 2022
This is a decent read. It goes through a number of themes in biology in a good way. However, the text too often falls into that philosophical trap of discussing definitions of terms, as if that was the solution to any problem, philosophical or otherwise.
August 7, 2023
Un buen librito introductorio, que toca muchos temas, dando una idea somera del estado actual de todos. Las bibliografía es extensa y está muy bien organizada, indicando lecturas apropiadas al final de cada capítulo. [[Peter Godfrey-Smith]].
# Recopilación de ideas varias
## Biología teórica
- El repaso histórico del c.1 es excelente.
- La distinción entre leyes estrictas (que no aceptan excepciones) y patrones estables (resilientes, robustos, invariantes) es útil para distinguir dos formas de hacer ciencia. La biología tendría más que ver con encontrar los segundos en la naturaleza (p.24).
- Es útil la distinción entre (p.29):
- ***Sistemas organizados***, en los que las partes cumplen distintas funciones y pueden ser muy diferentes entre sí. Se prestan al análisis mecánico. (Ver:: [[demonio tentacular]]).
- ***Sistemas agregadores***, en los que las partes son similares y tienen mayor grado de independencia; sus tendencias surgen de la acción combinada de ellas. (Ver:: [[demonio enjambre]]).
- La distinción entre dos tipos de modelos:
- ***Idealizaciones***, en las que se han realizado simplificaciones deliberadas.
- ***Abstracciones***, en las que no hay simplificación (borrar información), sino que se dejan algunas de los factores fuera de la descripción.
## Selección natural
[[Richard Lewontin]] identifica el proceso [[selección natural]] con tres proposiciones necesarias y suficientes. Según el autor, esta es la mejor síntesis hasta el momento (p.42-3):
1. *Principio de variación*. Entre los miembros de la especie hay variaciones morfoogicas, fisioogicas y conductuales.
2. *Principio de herencia*. Parte de la variación se hereda, de modo que cada individuo se parece más a aquellos con los que está relacionado que a aquellos con los que no tinen relación y, en concreto, la descendencia se parece a sus progenitores.
3. *Principio de aptitud diferencial*. Cada variante deja, en la generación inmediatamente siguiente o en generaciones posteriores, un número de descendientes distintos.
Nótese que se centran en la descendencia, no en la supervivencia. Estas condiciones, sin embargo, no son suficientes para que una población cambie; el autor expone un contraejemplo.
Hay autores que proponen una suerte de [[darwinismo universal]] ([[Daniel Dennet]] y otros).
[[Mary Jane West-Eberhard]] propone que los genes son *seguidores* y no *líderes* en los cambios evolutivos. Los organismos responden a los estímulos *haciendo algo nuevo*, y esto modifica las presiones selectivas que después alteran el material genético. El cambio conductual estaría al inicio de la cadena causal del cambio evolutivo.
## Reproducción e individualidad
Distingue tres tipos de reproducción (los límites no siempre están claros):
- *Dependiente de maquinaria externa*, como un virus.
- *Dependiente de condiciones externas pero con maquinaria interna*, como una célula.
- *Reproductores colectivos*, hechos de reproductores (simples o colectivos) más pequeños, como una colmena. Hay tres rasgos que caracterizan una reproducción colectiva genuina, y que pueden darse en mayor o menor medida:
- presencia de un cuello de botella (fase vital en que todo el colectivo se reduce a un solo organismo, como los gametos).
- división germen/soma (¿hay una línea germinal clara, que es la única que se reproduce? (células reproductoras, abejas reina, etc.))
- integración general de los sistemas en cuestión (¿es divisible el organismo?)
En el caso de organismos simbiontes, no está tan claro definir la reproducción. En algunos casos (como las bacterias del tracto digestivo de los pulgones) la herencia es vertical, de progenitores a hijos, mientras que en otros (como con la mayoría de bacterias de nuestro intestino) la asociación se produce de forma posterior al nacimiento, desde el ambiente. La conclusión parece ser que, en muchos casos, lo que se reproduce —según el concepto tradicional de reproducción— *no es el organismo* (p.93-4).
Pero, ¿hasta donde extender el concepto de organismo? ¿Lo son los ciclos tróficos de reaprovechamiento de materiales? Quizá el fenómeno de la vida es más difuso y disperso de lo que solemos considerar (p.95).
## Especies
Definiciones de especie:
- Tipológica. Es la tradicional; canda organismo puede pertenecer a un tipo-especie, determinado por una serie de características.
- Similitud general. Las especies son agrupaciones de individuos con un cierto grado de similitud.
- Comunidad reproductiva. Las especies están delimitadas por la posibilidad de reproducirse entre sí de sus individuos.
Todas estas presentan problemas y ventajas, discutidas en el libro. Como contraejemplo de la última destaca el anillo de poblaciones de salamandra alrededor del Valle Central de California, cada una capaz de reproducirse con sus vecinas pero no con el resto; también los organismos de reproducción asexual en general, que en muchos casos transfieren genoma horizontalmente con organismos genéticamente muy distantes (p.125).
La discusión de todo el tema es muy buena.
## Comportamiento social
¿De dónde proviene el altruismo?
- [[Charles Darwin]] ya propuso que de la selección de grupos. Pero esta tesis se enfrenta al problema de la *subversión* (los aprovechados).
- [[William Hamilton]] propuso en la década de 1960 la idea de [[selección de parentesco]].
- Una tercera opción se basa en la *reciprocidad* (sacrificio a corto plazo para obtener beneficio a largo plazo). Los experimentos en teoría de juegos la apoyan ([[dilema del prisionero]] iterado, la [[caza del ciervo]]).Son muy interesantes también los experimentos en psicología sobre el [[juego del ultimátum]], que muestran lo hondo que están grabados algunos comportamientos sociales en el ser humano (incluso con desconocidos a los que no vamos a volver a ver). #teoría-de-juegos
El debate entre estas posturas ha sido muy intenso.
## Información
Critica la idea de que el gen sea un transmisor de información o un código a ser leído en el sentido de que lo es un libro. A pesar de que expone sucintamente el marco de [[Claude Shannon]], no le parece relevante porque en ese sentido hay información en los genes, pero también en muchos otros procesos físicos. Finalmente establece una distinción entre *escribir* y *leer* información. En un libro tendríamos el sistema completo escribir-leer. En los genes, llega a aceptar, tendríamos una mitad del proceso, la lectura, pero el lugar de la escritura lo cubre la evolución: *evolución-leer*. El reverso sería un sistema como el cerebro, en el que hay escritura pero no lectura, sino activación neuronal *escritura-activación*.
## Cosas sueltas
- Dadas las tasas de reproducción celular de nuestro cuerpo y de mutación de un nucleótido por división celula, cada posible mutación singular de un nucleótido ocurre en nuestro genoma cientos de veces al día (p.85).
- Hay más células bacterianas en nuestro intestino que células animales en nuestro cuerpo entero (p.93).
- Es interesante su reflexión sobre como la pregunta por *qué es la vida* ha perdido peso desde el s.XIX, donde se suponía que había alguna propiedad definitoria de la misma, y el momento actual, en el que los conocimientos disponibles nos impiden separarla de la física o la química y entendemos mejor aspectos concretos como el metabólico, reproductivo, desarrollo, etc. (p.96). Ya no parece tan intuitivo pensar que las fronteras entre la vida y otros fenómenos sean claras.
- Al cruzarse dos cromosomas, no atienden a límites entre cistrones (unidades funcionales de ADN), pueden cortarse en cualquier nucleótido. La complejidad de la codificación genética es tremenda, poco lineal (p.102).
- Por qué los memes no encajan en la selección natural en p.162. (Ver:: [[meme]])
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23 08 07
# Recopilación de ideas varias
## Biología teórica
- El repaso histórico del c.1 es excelente.
- La distinción entre leyes estrictas (que no aceptan excepciones) y patrones estables (resilientes, robustos, invariantes) es útil para distinguir dos formas de hacer ciencia. La biología tendría más que ver con encontrar los segundos en la naturaleza (p.24).
- Es útil la distinción entre (p.29):
- ***Sistemas organizados***, en los que las partes cumplen distintas funciones y pueden ser muy diferentes entre sí. Se prestan al análisis mecánico. (Ver:: [[demonio tentacular]]).
- ***Sistemas agregadores***, en los que las partes son similares y tienen mayor grado de independencia; sus tendencias surgen de la acción combinada de ellas. (Ver:: [[demonio enjambre]]).
- La distinción entre dos tipos de modelos:
- ***Idealizaciones***, en las que se han realizado simplificaciones deliberadas.
- ***Abstracciones***, en las que no hay simplificación (borrar información), sino que se dejan algunas de los factores fuera de la descripción.
## Selección natural
[[Richard Lewontin]] identifica el proceso [[selección natural]] con tres proposiciones necesarias y suficientes. Según el autor, esta es la mejor síntesis hasta el momento (p.42-3):
1. *Principio de variación*. Entre los miembros de la especie hay variaciones morfoogicas, fisioogicas y conductuales.
2. *Principio de herencia*. Parte de la variación se hereda, de modo que cada individuo se parece más a aquellos con los que está relacionado que a aquellos con los que no tinen relación y, en concreto, la descendencia se parece a sus progenitores.
3. *Principio de aptitud diferencial*. Cada variante deja, en la generación inmediatamente siguiente o en generaciones posteriores, un número de descendientes distintos.
Nótese que se centran en la descendencia, no en la supervivencia. Estas condiciones, sin embargo, no son suficientes para que una población cambie; el autor expone un contraejemplo.
Hay autores que proponen una suerte de [[darwinismo universal]] ([[Daniel Dennet]] y otros).
[[Mary Jane West-Eberhard]] propone que los genes son *seguidores* y no *líderes* en los cambios evolutivos. Los organismos responden a los estímulos *haciendo algo nuevo*, y esto modifica las presiones selectivas que después alteran el material genético. El cambio conductual estaría al inicio de la cadena causal del cambio evolutivo.
## Reproducción e individualidad
Distingue tres tipos de reproducción (los límites no siempre están claros):
- *Dependiente de maquinaria externa*, como un virus.
- *Dependiente de condiciones externas pero con maquinaria interna*, como una célula.
- *Reproductores colectivos*, hechos de reproductores (simples o colectivos) más pequeños, como una colmena. Hay tres rasgos que caracterizan una reproducción colectiva genuina, y que pueden darse en mayor o menor medida:
- presencia de un cuello de botella (fase vital en que todo el colectivo se reduce a un solo organismo, como los gametos).
- división germen/soma (¿hay una línea germinal clara, que es la única que se reproduce? (células reproductoras, abejas reina, etc.))
- integración general de los sistemas en cuestión (¿es divisible el organismo?)
En el caso de organismos simbiontes, no está tan claro definir la reproducción. En algunos casos (como las bacterias del tracto digestivo de los pulgones) la herencia es vertical, de progenitores a hijos, mientras que en otros (como con la mayoría de bacterias de nuestro intestino) la asociación se produce de forma posterior al nacimiento, desde el ambiente. La conclusión parece ser que, en muchos casos, lo que se reproduce —según el concepto tradicional de reproducción— *no es el organismo* (p.93-4).
Pero, ¿hasta donde extender el concepto de organismo? ¿Lo son los ciclos tróficos de reaprovechamiento de materiales? Quizá el fenómeno de la vida es más difuso y disperso de lo que solemos considerar (p.95).
## Especies
Definiciones de especie:
- Tipológica. Es la tradicional; canda organismo puede pertenecer a un tipo-especie, determinado por una serie de características.
- Similitud general. Las especies son agrupaciones de individuos con un cierto grado de similitud.
- Comunidad reproductiva. Las especies están delimitadas por la posibilidad de reproducirse entre sí de sus individuos.
Todas estas presentan problemas y ventajas, discutidas en el libro. Como contraejemplo de la última destaca el anillo de poblaciones de salamandra alrededor del Valle Central de California, cada una capaz de reproducirse con sus vecinas pero no con el resto; también los organismos de reproducción asexual en general, que en muchos casos transfieren genoma horizontalmente con organismos genéticamente muy distantes (p.125).
La discusión de todo el tema es muy buena.
## Comportamiento social
¿De dónde proviene el altruismo?
- [[Charles Darwin]] ya propuso que de la selección de grupos. Pero esta tesis se enfrenta al problema de la *subversión* (los aprovechados).
- [[William Hamilton]] propuso en la década de 1960 la idea de [[selección de parentesco]].
- Una tercera opción se basa en la *reciprocidad* (sacrificio a corto plazo para obtener beneficio a largo plazo). Los experimentos en teoría de juegos la apoyan ([[dilema del prisionero]] iterado, la [[caza del ciervo]]).Son muy interesantes también los experimentos en psicología sobre el [[juego del ultimátum]], que muestran lo hondo que están grabados algunos comportamientos sociales en el ser humano (incluso con desconocidos a los que no vamos a volver a ver). #teoría-de-juegos
El debate entre estas posturas ha sido muy intenso.
## Información
Critica la idea de que el gen sea un transmisor de información o un código a ser leído en el sentido de que lo es un libro. A pesar de que expone sucintamente el marco de [[Claude Shannon]], no le parece relevante porque en ese sentido hay información en los genes, pero también en muchos otros procesos físicos. Finalmente establece una distinción entre *escribir* y *leer* información. En un libro tendríamos el sistema completo escribir-leer. En los genes, llega a aceptar, tendríamos una mitad del proceso, la lectura, pero el lugar de la escritura lo cubre la evolución: *evolución-leer*. El reverso sería un sistema como el cerebro, en el que hay escritura pero no lectura, sino activación neuronal *escritura-activación*.
## Cosas sueltas
- Dadas las tasas de reproducción celular de nuestro cuerpo y de mutación de un nucleótido por división celula, cada posible mutación singular de un nucleótido ocurre en nuestro genoma cientos de veces al día (p.85).
- Hay más células bacterianas en nuestro intestino que células animales en nuestro cuerpo entero (p.93).
- Es interesante su reflexión sobre como la pregunta por *qué es la vida* ha perdido peso desde el s.XIX, donde se suponía que había alguna propiedad definitoria de la misma, y el momento actual, en el que los conocimientos disponibles nos impiden separarla de la física o la química y entendemos mejor aspectos concretos como el metabólico, reproductivo, desarrollo, etc. (p.96). Ya no parece tan intuitivo pensar que las fronteras entre la vida y otros fenómenos sean claras.
- Al cruzarse dos cromosomas, no atienden a límites entre cistrones (unidades funcionales de ADN), pueden cortarse en cualquier nucleótido. La complejidad de la codificación genética es tremenda, poco lineal (p.102).
- Por qué los memes no encajan en la selección natural en p.162. (Ver:: [[meme]])
---
23 08 07
February 23, 2019
This is not a philosophy book but a polemics for various attempted formalizations of theories of evolution. The author actually quotes Richard Dawkins in support of some of them --- might as well quote Bill Maher. Any reader interested in the epistemics of biology would be better off reading a good book on epistemology.
February 15, 2019
Πολύ ενδιαφέρον αλλά και πυκνογραμμενο βιβλίο... Θέλει απολυτα καθαρό μυαλό όταν το διαβάζεις. Σίγουρα θα πρέπει να ξανακοιταξω μερικά σημεία του.. θα ήθελα να εχει περισσότερα παραδείγματα που να δείχνουν αμεσα πως βρίσκουν εφαρμογή οι θεωρίες του στη φύση.
May 19, 2021
Read like a comprehensive overview of biology, especially on evolution
Doesn't read too philosophical for me. Evolutionary game theory is only briefly covered in one chapter
Not much of an argument piece, mainly descriptive
Doesn't read too philosophical for me. Evolutionary game theory is only briefly covered in one chapter
Not much of an argument piece, mainly descriptive
September 4, 2025
Pretty good introductory novel into the issues central to Philosophy of Biology. Peter Godfrey-Smith is easy to understand and is very knowledgeable in the field. Would recommend if you’re interested in Philosophy of Biology/Science/bioethics.
Read
February 11, 2025a brain exercise....exhausted :)
Read
December 5, 2014570 G583 2014
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