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Discussion: On The Propensity Definition of Fitness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alexander Rosenberg
Alexander Rosenberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Syracuse University
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Abstract

In the insightful and searching paper of Mills and Beatty (1979) the following definition of ‘fitness’, as the term figures in the theory of natural selection, is offered:

The [individual] fitness of an organism x in environment E equals n =df n is the expected number of descendants which x will leave in E.

Information

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 268 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

The author thanks David Hull and Mary B. Williams for helpful discussion, and Elliott Sober for showing the need to amplify certain points. Research supported in part by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Solomon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

References

REFERENCES

Beatty, John (1980), “Optimal Design Models and the Strategy of Model Building in Evolutionary Biology”, Philosophy of Science 47: 532–561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, S. and Beatty, J. (1979), “The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness”, Philosophy of Science 46: 263–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, M. B. (1970), “Deducing the Consequences of Evolution”, Journal of Theoretiçal Biology 29: 343–385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed