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Reflections on Path Dependence and Irreversibility: Lessons from Evolutionary Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eric Desjardins
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Abstract

This essay examines the claim “path dependence entails irreversibility” from the point of view of evolutionary biology. I argue that evolutionary irreversibility possesses many faces, sometimes conflicting with path dependence. I propose an account of path dependence that does not rely on irreversibility and explain why it more naturally coexists with the notion of (contingent) irreversibility developed by the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. However, I argue that we should not conceive of this relationship as necessary.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 724 - 738
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Robert Batterman, Christopher Smeenk, Gillian Baker, John Beatty, Christopher Stephens, Paul Bartha, and Valérie Racine for their comments on earlier versions of this work.

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