Version 1
: Received: 1 April 2020 / Approved: 3 April 2020 / Online: 3 April 2020 (04:28:34 CEST)
Version 2
: Received: 21 September 2020 / Approved: 22 September 2020 / Online: 22 September 2020 (08:45:54 CEST)
Wagner, G. P. & Tomlinson, G., (2022) “Extending the Explanatory Scope of Evolutionary Theory: The Origination of Historical Kinds in Biology and Culture”, Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14: 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.2095
Wagner, G. P. & Tomlinson, G., (2022) “Extending the Explanatory Scope of Evolutionary Theory: The Origination of Historical Kinds in Biology and Culture”, Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14: 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.2095
Wagner, G. P. & Tomlinson, G., (2022) “Extending the Explanatory Scope of Evolutionary Theory: The Origination of Historical Kinds in Biology and Culture”, Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14: 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.2095
Wagner, G. P. & Tomlinson, G., (2022) “Extending the Explanatory Scope of Evolutionary Theory: The Origination of Historical Kinds in Biology and Culture”, Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 14: 1. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.2095
Abstract
Two welcome extensions of evolutionary thinking have come to prominence over the last thirty years: the so-called “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES) and debate about biological kinds and individuals. These two agendas have, however, remained orthogonal to one another. The EES has mostly restricted itself to widening the explanations of adaptation offered by the preceding “modern evolutionary synthesis” by including additional mechanisms of inheritance and variation; while discussion of biological kinds has turned toward philosophical questions of essential vs. contingent properties of life forms and realist vs. epistemological approaches to categorization and classification. Here we attempt to broaden the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory by linking these two agendas. We expand on the mechanistic orientation of the EES, using new understandings of networked systems of components in order to engage the distinct intellectual challenge of the origination of historical kinds. With this phrase we designate a subset of natural kinds that acquires, through evolutionary processes, a quasi-independent lineage-history. Such kinds emerge in both biology and culture, and we enlarge the limited number of historical kinds that have thus far been recognized in evolutionary biology in a series of paradigmatic exemplars, from genes and cell types to rituals and music. For each exemplar we discern specific mechanisms by which it arose and persists; comparing these, we suggest a general unity in the ways in which diverse historical kinds originate.
Keywords
historical kinds; individuation; cultural evolution; evolutionary innovation
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Commenter: Gunter Wagner
Commenter's Conflict of Interests: Author