Book contents
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Understanding Life
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Species
- 2 Organicism and Mechanism: Rival Root Metaphors
- 3 “The Non-Darwinian Revolution?”
- 4 The Synthesis
- 5 Is Natural Selection a Vera Causa?
- 6 The Positive Case
- 7 Time for a Change?
- 8 Natural Selection and Its Discontents
- Envoi
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References
- Figure Credits
- Index
5 - Is Natural Selection a Vera Causa?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2022
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Understanding Life
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Species
- 2 Organicism and Mechanism: Rival Root Metaphors
- 3 “The Non-Darwinian Revolution?”
- 4 The Synthesis
- 5 Is Natural Selection a Vera Causa?
- 6 The Positive Case
- 7 Time for a Change?
- 8 Natural Selection and Its Discontents
- Envoi
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References
- Figure Credits
- Index
Summary
Time to pull back and get a little more conceptual. We need to ask some penetrating questions about the nature, the scope, the truth-value of natural selection. Finding answers, the quest begins in the past. Charles Darwin was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. The greatest British scientist of them all, Isaac Newton, was also a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and his spirit, his achievements, his reputation, infused every discussion about science, including about the life sciences. In his Principia, Newton started with his three laws of motion, together with his law of gravitational attraction, and then went on to infer, deductively, the pertinent terrestrial laws, those of Galileo, and the pertinent celestial laws, those of Copernicus affirming the heliocentric nature of the Universe and those of later thinkers, especially Kepler on planetary motion. It was a given that the ambitious young Charles Darwin would want to show Kant dead wrong. There could be a Newton of the blade of grass, and that Newton was going to be Charles Darwin.
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- Understanding Natural Selection , pp. 73 - 90Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022