Element contents
Comparative Thinking in Biology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021
Summary
Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their investigations, then, biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes, comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - 'comparative thinking' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly, comparative thinking is local: what we can do with knowledge of a lineage is limited by the evolutionary processes into which it fits. In light of this analysis, the Element examines the experimental study of animal cognition, and macroevolutionary investigation of the 'shape of life', demonstrating the importance of comparative thinking in understanding both the power and limitations of biological knowledge.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781108616683Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 18 February 2021
Bibliography
Beatty, J. (2016). What are narratives good for? Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 58, 33–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beatty, J. (2006). Replaying life’s tape. The Journal of Philosophy, 103(7), 336–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J. (1995). The evolutionary contingency thesis. Concepts, Theories, and Rationality in the Biological Sciences, 45, 81.Google Scholar
Bressman, N. R., Farina, S. C., & Gibb, A. C. (2016). Look before you leap: visual navigation and terrestrial locomotion of the intertidal killifish Fundulus heteroclitus. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A: Ecological Genetics and Physiology, 325(1), 57–64.Google Scholar
Brigandt, I. (2017). Typology and natural kinds in evo-devo. In Nuno de la Rosa, L. & Müller, G. (eds.), Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3-319–33038-9_100–1.Google Scholar
Brigandt, I. (2013). Integration in biology: philosophical perspectives on the dynamics of interdisciplinarity. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Volume 44, Issue 4, Part A, December 2013, Pages 461–465CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brigandt, I. (2010). Beyond reduction and pluralism: toward an epistemology of explanatory integration in biology. Erkenntnis, 73(3), 295–311.Google Scholar
Brigandt, I. (2007). Typology now: homology and developmental constraints explain evolvability. Biology & Philosophy, 22(5), 709–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brigandt, I. (2003). Homology in comparative, molecular, and evolutionary developmental biology: the radiation of a concept. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 299(1), 9–17.Google Scholar
Brigandt, I. & Griffiths, P. E. (2007). The importance of homology for biology and philosophy. Biology & Philosophy, 22(5), 633–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bromham, L. (2016). Testing hypotheses in macroevolution. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 55, 47–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, C., Laland, K., & Krause, J. (eds.). (2008). Fish Cognition and Behavior. John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Brown, R. L. (2014). What evolvability really is. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65(3), 549–572.Google Scholar
Buckner, C. (2013). Morgan’s Canon, meet Hume’s Dictum: avoiding anthropofabulation in cross-species comparisons. Biology & Philosophy, 28(5), 853–871.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calcott, B. (2009). Lineage explanations: explaining how biological mechanisms change. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 60(1), 51–78.Google Scholar
Calcott, B., Levy, A., Siegal, M. L., Soyer, O. S., & Wagner, A. (2015). Engineering and biology: counsel for a continued relationship. Biological Theory, 10(1), 50–59.Google Scholar
Candea, M. (2018). Comparison in Anthropology: the improbable method. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Currie, A. (2019a). Scientific Knowledge and the Deep Past: History Matters. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Currie, A. (2019b). Simplicity, one-shot hypotheses and paleobiological explanation. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 41(1), 10.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Currie, A. M. (2019c). Epistemic optimism, speculation, and the historical sciences. PTPBio, 11(7), 2011–2015.Google Scholar
Currie, A. M. (2018). Rock, Bone, and Ruin: An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Currie, A. (2016). Ethnographic analogy, the comparative method, and archaeological special pleading. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 55, 84–94.Google Scholar
Currie, A. M. (2014). Venomous dinosaurs and rear-fanged snakes: homology and homoplasy characterized. Erkenntnis, 79(3), 701–727.Google Scholar
Currie, A. (2013). Convergence as evidence. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 64(4), 763–786.Google Scholar
Currie, A. M. (2012). Convergence, contingency & morphospace. Biology & Philosophy, 4(27), 583–593.Google Scholar
Currie, A. & Killin, A. (2016). Musical pluralism and the science of music. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 6(1), 9–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, A. & Walsh, K. (2018). Newton on Islandworld: Ontic-driven explanations of scientific method. Perspectives on Science, 26(1), 119–156.Google Scholar
Dacey, M. (2016). The varieties of parsimony in psychology. Mind & Language, 31(4), 414–437.Google Scholar
Desjardin, E. (2011). Historicity and experimental evolution. Biology & Philosophy, 26, 339–364.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. I. (2009). The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution. Annals of Human Biology, 36(5), 562–572.Google Scholar
Dwyer, D. M. & Burgess, K. V. (2011). Rational accounts of animal behaviour? Lessons from C. Lloyd Morgan’s canon. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 24(4), 349–364.Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (2009). Homology: integrating phylogeny and development. Biological Theory, 4(3), 225–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (2007). Psychological categories as homologies: lessons from ethology. Biology & Philosophy, 22(5), 659–674.Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. (1998). Species pluralism and anti-realism. Philosophy of Science, 65(1), 103–120.Google Scholar
Ereshefsky, M. & Turner, D. (2019). Historicity and explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 65, 103–120.Google Scholar
Finkelman, L. (2019). Betting & hierarchy in paleontology. Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology, 11, 1–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S. (2017). Against Morgan’s Canon. In Andrews, K. & Beck, J. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, Routledge NY, pp. 437–447.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, S. (2008). Doing away with Morgan’s Canon. Mind & Language, 23(2), 224–246.Google Scholar
Forber, P. (2009). Introduction: A primer on adaptationism. Biology & Philosophy, 24(2), 155–159.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, M. T. (2016). Homology, convergence and parallelism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1685), 20150035.Google Scholar
Ghiselin, M. T. (2005). Homology as a relation of correspondence between parts of individuals. Theory in Biosciences, 124(2), 91–103.Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, P. (2001). Three kinds of adaptationism. In Orzack, S. H. & Sober, E. (eds.), Adaptationism and Optimality, Cambridge University Press, pp.335–357.Google Scholar
Goswami, A., Milne, N., & Wroe, S. (2011). Biting through constraints: cranial morphology, disparity and convergence across living and fossil carnivorous mammals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 278(1713), 1831–1839.Google Scholar
Goswami, A., Weisbecker, V., & Sánchez‐Villagra, M. R. (2009). Developmental modularity and the marsupial–placental dichotomy. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 312(3), 186–195.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1990). Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. WW Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581–598.Google Scholar
Grantham, T. A. (2007). Is macroevolution more than successive rounds of microevolution? Palaeontology, 50(1), 75–85.Google Scholar
Grantham, T. A. (1999). Explanatory pluralism in paleobiology. Philosophy of Science, 66, S223–S236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, P. E. (2007). The phenomena of homology. Biology & Philosophy, 22(5), 643–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffiths, P. E. (1996). The historical turn in the study of adaptation. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 47(4), 511–532.Google Scholar
Hall, B. K. (2012). Parallelism, deep homology, and evo-devo. Evolution & Development, 14, 33–39.Google Scholar
Hall, B. K. (2007). Homoplasy and homology: Dichotomy or continuum? Journal of Human Evolution, 52(5), 473–479.Google Scholar
Hall, B. K. (2003). Descent with modification: the unity underlying homology and homoplasy as seen through an analysis of development and evolution. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 78(3), 409–433.Google Scholar
Harvey, P. H. & Purvis, A. (1991). Comparative methods for explaining adaptations. Nature, 351(6328), 619–624.Google Scholar
Harvey, P. H. & Pagel, M. D. (1991). The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology (Vol. 239). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haslanger, S. (2000). Gender and race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? Noûs, 34(1), 31–55.Google Scholar
Inkpen, R. & Turner, D. (2012). The topography of historical contingency. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 6(1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karin-D’Arcy, M. (2005). The modern role of Morgan’s canon in comparative psychology. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 18(3), 179–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendig, C. (2015). Homologizing as kinding. In Kendig, C. (ed.), Natural Kinds and Classification in Scientific Practice, (Routledge, pp. 126–146.Google Scholar
Lever, J., Krzywinski, M., & Altman, N. S. (2017). Points of significance: principal component analysis. Nature Methods, 14(7), 641–642.Google Scholar
Levy, A. & Currie, A. (2015). Model organisms are not (theoretical) models. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 66(2), 327–348.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (2000). Darwin’s influence on modern thought. Scientific American, 283(1), 78–83.Google Scholar
Livezey, B. C. (1992). Morphological corollaries and ecological implications of flightlessness in the kakapo (Psittaciformes: Strigops habroptilus). Journal of Morphology, 213(1), 105–145.Google Scholar
Logan, C. J., Avin, S., Boogert, N., Buskell, A., Cross, F. R., Currie, A., … & Shigeno, S. (2018). Beyond brain size: uncovering the neural correlates of behavioral and cognitive specialization. Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews.Google Scholar
Love, A. C. (2007). Functional homology and homology of function: Biological concepts and philosophical consequences. Biology & Philosophy, 22(5), 691–708.Google Scholar
Love, A. C. (2003). Evolutionary morphology, innovation, and the synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology. Biology and Philosophy, 18(2), 309–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maclaurin, J (2003) The good, the bad and the impossible: a critical notice of ‘theoretical morphology: the concept and its applications’ by George McGhee. Biology & Philosophy, 18, 463–476Google Scholar
Mariscal, C. (2015). Universal biology: Assessing universality from a single example. The impact of discovering life beyond earth.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1959). Darwin and the evolutionary theory in biology. In Meggers, B. J. (ed.), Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal, New York: Theo Gaus’ Sons, Inc, pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
McConwell, A. K. & Currie, A. (2017). Gouldian arguments and the sources of contingency. Biology & Philosophy, 32(2), 243–261.Google Scholar
McConwell, A. K. (2017). Contingency and individuality: A plurality of evolutionary individuality types. Philosophy of Science, 84(5), 1104–1116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mast, S. O. (1915). The behavior of fundulus, with especial reference to overland escape from tide-pools and locomotion on land. Journal of Animal Behavior, 5(5), 341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGhee, G. R. (1999). Theoretical Morphology: The Concept and Its Applications. Columbia University Press, New YorkGoogle Scholar
Meketa, I. (2014). A critique of the principle of cognitive simplicity in comparative cognition. Biology & Philosophy, 29(5), 731–745Google Scholar
Millstein, R. L. (2000). Chance and macroevolution. Philosophy of Science, 67(4), 603–624.Google Scholar
Morgan, C. Lloyd. (1894). An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. London: Walter Scott.Google Scholar
Morris, S. C. (2003). Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Müller, G. B. (2007). Evo–devo: extending the evolutionary synthesis. Nature Reviews Genetics, 8(12), 943–949.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nolan, D (1997). Quantitative parsimony. Quantitative Parsimony, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 48, 329–343.Google Scholar
Nyrup, R. (2018). Of Water Drops and Atomic Nuclei: Analogies and Pursuit Worthiness in Science. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Orzack, S. H. & Sober, E. (1994). Optimality models and the test of adaptationism. The American Naturalist, 143(3), 361–380.Google Scholar
Owen, R. (1843). Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Invertebrate Animals. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.Google Scholar
Panchen, A. L. (1999, May). Homology-history of a concept. In Bock, G. & Cardew, G. (eds.), Novartis Foundation Symposium, Wiley, pp. 5–17.Wiley.Google Scholar
Parke, E. C. (2014). Experiments, simulations, and epistemic privilege. Philosophy of Science, 81(4), 516–536.Google Scholar
Pearce, T. (2011). Evolution and constraints on variation: Variant specification and range of assessment. Philosophy of Science, (78), 739–751.Google Scholar
Pearce, T. (2012). Convergence and parallelism in evolution: A Neo-Gouldian account. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 63, 429–448Google Scholar
Pigliucci, M. & Müller, G. B. (2010). Elements of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Evolution: The Extended Synthesis. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Potochnik, A. (2010). Explanatory independence and epistemic interdependence: A case study of the optimality approach. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 61(1), 213–233.Google Scholar
Powell, R. & Mariscal, C. (2014). There is grandeur in this view of life: the bio-philosophical implications of convergent evolution. Acta Biotheoretica, 62(1), 115–121.Google Scholar
Powell, R. & Mariscal, C. (2015). Convergent evolution as natural experiment: the tape of life reconsidered. Interface Focus, 5(6), 20150040.Google Scholar
Powell, R. (2007). Is convergence more than an analogy? Homoplasy and its implications for macroevolutionary predictability. Biology and Philosophy, 22(4), 565–578.Google Scholar
Powell, R. (2009). Contingency and convergence in macroevolution: a reply to John Beatty. The Journal of Philosophy, 106(7), 390–403.Google Scholar
Powell, R. (2020). Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind (Vol. 25). MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ramsey, G. & Peterson, A. (2012). Sameness in biology. Philosophy of Science, 79(2), 255–275.Google Scholar
Raup, D. M. (1966). Geometric analysis of shell coiling: general problems. Journal of Paleontology, 40(5), 1178–1190.Google Scholar
Rieppel, O. (2005). Modules, kinds, and homology. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 304(1), 18–27.Google Scholar
Sanford, G. M., Lutterschmidt, W. I., & Hutchison, V. H. (2002). The comparative method revisited. BioScience, 52(9), 830–836.Google Scholar
Sansom, R. (2003). Constraining the adaptationism debate. Biology and Philosophy, 18(4), 493–512.Google Scholar
Sayers, K., Lovejoy, C. O., Emery, N. J., Clayton, N. S., Hunt, K. D., Laland, K. N., … & Strier, K. B. (2008). The chimpanzee has no clothes: a critical examination of Pan troglodytes in models of human evolution. Current Anthropology, 49(1), 87–114.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (November 2009). Parsimony arguments in science and philosophy – A test case for naturalism p. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association Vol. 83, No. 2 (pp. 117–155). American Philosophical Association.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1991). Reconstructing the Past: Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1997). Two outbreaks of lawlessness in recent philosophy of biology. Philosophy of Science, 64, S458–S467.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (2005). Comparative psychology meets evolutionary biology. In Daston, L. & Mitman, G. (eds.), Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism, Columbia University Press, pp. 85–99.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K. (2005). Another view of life. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci, 3(36), 585–593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suzuki, D. G. & Tanaka, S. (2017). A phenomenological and dynamic view of homology: homologs as persistently reproducible modules. Biological Theory, 12(3), 169–180.Google Scholar
Tucker, A. (1998). Unique events: The underdetermination of explanation. Erkenntnis, 48(1), 61–83.Google Scholar
Turner, D. & Havstad, J. C., ‘Philosophy of Macroevolution’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/macroevolution/.Google Scholar
Turner, D. (2011). Paleontology: A Philosophical Introduction. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, D. (2000). The functions of fossils: inference and explanation in functional morphology. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 31(1), 193–212.Google Scholar
Uyeda, J. C., Zenil-Ferguson, R., & Pennell, M. W. (2018). Rethinking phylogenetic comparative methods. Systematic Biology, 67(6), 1091–1109.Google Scholar
Van Valkenburgh, B. & Jenkins, I. (2002). Evolutionary patterns in the history of Permo-Triassic and Cenozoic synapsid predators. The Paleontological Society Papers, 8, 267–288.Google Scholar
Vaesen, K. (2014). Chimpocentrism and reconstructions of human evolution (a timely reminder). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 45, 12–21.Google Scholar
Vermeij, G. J. (2006). Historical contingency and the purported uniqueness of evolutionary innovations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103(6), 1804–1809.Google Scholar
Wagner, G. P. (2018). Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, G. P. (2016). What is ‘homology thinking’ and what is it for?. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 326(1), 3–8.Google Scholar
Waters, C. K. (2007). Causes that make a difference. The Journal of Philosophy, 104(11), 551–579.Google Scholar
Witteveen, J. (2018). Typological thinking: then and now. Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, 330(3), 123–131.Google Scholar
Witteveen, J. (2016). ‘A temporary oversimplification’: Mayr, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and the origins of the typology/population dichotomy (part 2 of 2). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 57, 96–105.Google Scholar
Wong, T. W. (2020). Evolutionary contingency as non-trivial objective probability: Biological evitability and evolutionary trajectories. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 101246. www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848619300640Google Scholar
Wong, T. W. (2019). The evolutionary contingency thesis and evolutionary idiosyncrasies. Biology & Philosophy, 34(2), 22.Google Scholar
Worthy, T. H., Hand, S. J., Archer, M., Scofield, R. P., & De Pietri, V. L. (2019). Evidence for a giant parrot from the Early Miocene of New Zealand. Biology letters, 15(8), 20190467.Google Scholar
Worthy, T. H., De Pietri, V. L., & Scofield, R. P. (2017). Recent advances in avian palaeobiology in New Zealand with implications for understanding New Zealand’s geological, climatic and evolutionary histories. New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 44(3), 177–211.Google Scholar
Worthy, T. H., Tennyson, A. J., & Scofield, R. P. (2011). An early Miocene diversity of parrots (Aves, Strigopidae, Nestorinae) from New Zealand. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31(5), 1102–1116.Google Scholar
Zentall, T. R. (2018). Morgan’s Canon: Is it still a useful rule of thumb?. Ethology, 124(7), 449–457.Google Scholar
- 16
- Cited by