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Increasingly Radical Claims about Heredity and Fitness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eugene Earnshaw-Whyte
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Abstract

On the classical account of evolution by natural selection (ENS) found in Lewontin and many subsequent authors, ENS is conceived as involving three key ingredients: phenotypic variation, fitness differences, and heredity. Through the analysis of three problem cases involving heredity, I argue that the classical conception is substantially flawed, showing that heredity is not required for selection. I consider further problems with the classical account of ENS arising from conflations between three distinct senses of the central concept of ‘fitness’ and offer an alternative to the classical conception of ENS involving the interaction of distinct evolutionary mechanisms.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 3 , July 2012 , pp. 396 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Denis Walsh, Mohan Matthen, Jean Gayon, and my anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

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