Philosophy of Biology
Problems in the philosophy of biology go back to Spinoza, if not to Aristotle. They proliferate after Darwin and become pressing in the late twentieth-century revolution in biology. And these problems are as much those of biologists as philosophers, intersecting as they do both subjects equally. We trace most of these problems back to the nature of adaptation and fitness, and forward in their ramifications for molecular and evolutionary biology and the relations among them. We apply solutions to these problems to illuminate the structure and explanatory strategy of the theory of natural selection, and the controversial conceptual issues about units and levels of biological organization in which it has figured. The philosophy of biology has been a subject of excitement and ferment for more than a generation. We anticipate no relief from this state of affairs.
