Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection

by Peter Godfrey-Smith

In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "natural selection," a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. Godfrey-Smith draws on new developments in biology,philosophy of science, and other fields to give a new analysis and extension of Darwin's idea. The central concept used is that of a "Darwinian population," a collection of things with the capacity to undergo change by natural selection. From this starting point, new analyses of the role of genes inevolution, the application of Darwinian ideas to cultural change, and "evolutionary transitions" that produce complex organisms and societies are developed. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection will be essential reading for anyone interested in evolutionary theory

Genres: Philosophy, Science, Evolution, Biology, Nonfiction, Research

218 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 26, 2009

About the author

I 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.

Reviews

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author starts out at the deep end, with rather abstract descriptions of science and philosophy. He makes the distinction between science (the study of the natural world), philosophy of science (the study of how science is done), and philosophy of nature (what science says about about how nature works, in a broad sense). I am very interested in the philosophy of nature.

Very interesting topic, but tough to read - cryptic, and using academic wishy-washy language ("could be this, could be that"). I would like to see a popular simplification. In the last chapter, there is an equation with a brief discussion (about "IBN" - imitate best neighbor) and it is stated that this equation should be explored more.

[mpacer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a much more extensive review that I will link to once its scanned in (a little less than 250 handwritten pages without covering the appendix). But if you want to have a taste of the book, if you go to http://petergodfreysmith.com/Dpops_PG... you can read what I think is one of the most fascinating chapters on anything that I've ever read.

If you want me to get a hurry on putting up the full review, ping me and I'll see what I can do to make it happen :).

[Yanick Punter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love books that show my intelligence is overrated. This is one of those. I re-read it and got a better understanding, though I think I haven't fully grasped everything. Worth another re-read? I think so.

[Ronald Diehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two takeaways:

1. My own suspicion is that evolution is queerer than we can suppose.

2. My head hurts.

[James DiGiovanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for learning about conflicting interpretations of elements of evolutionary theory, especially the question of what the unit of evolution is, dna, gene, cell, organism or population