Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tpknm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-30T07:07:46.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Competing Units of Selection? A Case of Symbiosis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Sandra D. Mitchell
Sandra D. Mitchell*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Department, The Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The controversy regarding the unit of selection is fundamentally a dispute about what is the correct causal structure of the process of evolution by natural selection and its ontological commitments. By characterizing the process as consisting of two essential steps—interaction and transmission—a singular answer to the unit question becomes ambiguous. With such an account on hand, two recent defenses of competing units of selection are considered. Richard Dawkins maintains that the gene is the appropriate unit of selection and Robert Brandon, in response, argues that the individual organism is better suited to the role. This paper argues that by making explicit the underlying questions that each of these views addresses, the apparent conflict can be resolved. Furthermore, such a resolution allows for a more complete and realistic understanding of the process of evolution by natural selection.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1987 , pp. 351 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by 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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank John Beatty, James Boster, Robert Brandon, Nancy Cartwright, Steve Gaulin, Peter Machamer, Merrilee Salmon and the two referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

References

Brandon, R. (1981a), “Biological Teleology: Questions and Explanations”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 12: 91–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, R. (1981b), “A Structural Description of Evolutionary Theory”, in Asquith, P. and Giere, R. (eds.), PSA 1980, Volume 2. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 427–439.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. (1982), “The Levels of Selection”, in Asquith, P. and Nickles, T. (eds.), PSA 1982, Volume 1. East Lansing, Michigan: Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 315–323.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. (1985), “Adaptation Explanations: Are Adaptations for the Good of Replicators or Interactors?”, in Depew, D. and Weber, B. (eds.), Evolution at a Crossroads: The New Biology and the New Philosophy of Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press/A Bradford Book, pp. 81–96.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1978), “Replicator Selection and the Extended Phenotype”, Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 47: 61–76. Reprinted in Sober (1984).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dawkins, R. (1982a), “Replicators and Vehicles”, in King's College Sociobiology Group (eds.), King's College Sociobiology Group Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, pp. 45–64.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1982b), The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, R. A. (1930), The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, S. J. (1977), “Caring Groups and Selfish Genes”, Natural History 86: 20–24.Google Scholar
Grant, V. (1963), The Origin of Adaptations. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1981), “The Units of Evolution: A Metaphysical Essay”, in Jensen, U. L. and Harre, R. (eds.), The Philosophy of Evolution. Brighton: Harvester Press, pp. 22–44.Google Scholar
Kettlewell, H. B. D. (1956), “Further Selection Experiments on Industrial Melanism in the Lepidoptera”, Heredity 10: 287–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1970), “The Units of Selection”, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 1: 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1978), “Adaptation”, Scientific American 238: 157–169.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1963), Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, E. (1978), “Evolution”, Scientific American 239: 46–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ricklefs, R. (1973), The Economy of Nature, 2nd edition. New York: Chiron Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. C. (1971), Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. (1966), Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, W. C. (1980), “Reductionistic Research Strategies and Their Biases in the Units of Selection Controversy”, in Nickles, T. (ed.), Scientific Discovery, Volume II. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 213–259.Google Scholar
Wynne-Edwards, V. C. (1962), Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.Google Scholar

A correction has been issued for this article:

Correction