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The “Genetic Program” Program: A Commentary on Maynard Smith on Information in Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Kim Sterelny
Kim Sterelny*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington Philosophy Program, RSSS, Australian National University
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Extract

In many texts on evolution the reader will find a characteristic depiction of inheritance and evolution, one showing the generations of an evolving population linked only by a causal flow from genotype to genotype. On this view, the genotype of each organism in this population plays a dual role as both the motor of individual development and as the sole causal channel across the generations (cf., e.g., Maynard Smith 1993, Fig. 8). This picture is known to be literally false. In many species, parents exert direct causal influence on their offspring, and some of those influences cause the offspring to resemble the parent. For example, a butterfly that lays her eggs on the same plant host on which she hatched thereby exerts a causal influence on her offspring, and one apt to cause them to resemble her more than they would, had she chosen a plant of a different species. None of this is at all controversial, but it poses a puzzle. If the “Weissmanian” conception is literally false, why is it seen as a perspicacious representation of evolution?

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 195 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.

‡

Thanks to Russell Gray and Paul Griffiths for comments on a draft of these comments.

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