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The Paradox of Stasis and the Nature of Explanations in Evolutionary Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jonathan Michael Kaplan
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Abstract

Recently, Estes and Arnold claimed to have “solved” the paradox of evolutionary stasis; they claim that stabilizing selection, and only stabilizing selection, can explain the patterns of evolutionary divergence observed over “all timescales.” While Estes and Arnold clearly think that they have identified the processes that produce evolutionary stasis, they have not. Instead, Estes and Arnold identify a particular evolutionary pattern but not the processes that produce that pattern. This mistake is important; the slippage between pattern and process is common in population and quantitative genetics and contributes to a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of explanations in evolutionary biology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 2009 , pp. 797 - 808
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Audience members at the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology conference in Exeter, England, a colloquium at the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the PSA meeting in Pittsburgh provided extensive useful feedback on this material. Kim Sterelny in particular made several useful suggestions, and Massimo Pigliucci provided helpful feedback on various earlier drafts of this paper. All remaining mistakes are of course my own.

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