Hostname: page-component-7d8f8d645b-9fg92 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-05-29T15:07:37.741Z Has data issue: false Feature Flags: { "useRatesEcommerce": true } hasContentIssue false
  • English

Is Organismic Fitness at the Basis of Evolutionary Theory?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Charles H. Pence  and
Grant Ramsey
Get access Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fitness is a central theoretical concept in evolutionary theory. Despite its importance, much debate has occurred over how to conceptualize and formalize fitness. One point of debate concerns the roles of organismic and trait fitness. In a recent addition to this debate, Elliott Sober argues that trait fitness is the central fitness concept, and that organismic fitness is of little value. In this paper, by contrast, we argue that it is organismic fitness that lies at the bases of both the conceptual role of fitness and its role as a measure of evolutionary dynamics.

Type
Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 1081 - 1091
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Thanks to Elliott Sober and Carlos Mariscal for comments. Thanks also to audiences at the 2014 Philosophy of Science Association Meeting, the 2014 British Society for Philosophy of Science Meeting, and the Duke Philosophy of Biology Reading Group.

References

Abrams, Marshall. 2009. “The Unity of Fitness.” Philosophy of Science 76 (Proceedings): 750–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariew, André, and Ernst, Zachary. 2009. “What Fitness Can’t Be.” Erkenntnis 71 (3): 289–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, David J. 1995. “Juvenile Groups in a Coral-Reef Damselfish: Density-Dependent Effects on Individual Fitness and Population Demography.” Ecology 76 (1): 91–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouchard, Frédéric, and Huneman, Philippe. 2013. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species. 1st ed. London: John Murray.Google Scholar
Endler, John A. 1986. Natural Selection in the Wild. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gillespie, John H. 1974. “Natural Selection for Within-Generation Variance in Offspring Number.” Genetics 76:601–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. 2009. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartl, Daniel L., and Clark, Andrew G.. 1997. Principles of Population Genetics. 3rd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.Google Scholar
Krimbas, Costas B. 2004. “On Fitness.” Biology and Philosophy 19 (2): 185–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Susan K., and Beatty, John H.. 1979. “The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness.” Philosophy of Science 46 (2): 263–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pence, Charles H., and Ramsey, Grant. 2013. “A New Foundation for the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (4): 851–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, Elliott. 2001. “The Two Faces of Fitness.” In Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives, ed. Singh, Rama S., 309–21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Rama S. 2013. “Trait Fitness Is Not a Propensity, but Fitness Variation Is.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44:336–41.Google Scholar
Walsh, Denis M., Lewens, Tim, and Ariew, André. 2002. “The Trials of Life: Natural Selection and Random Drift.” Philosophy of Science 69 (3): 429–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar