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- Title
Natural Selection and Drift as Individual-Level Causes of Evolution.
- Authors
Bourrat, Pierrick
- Abstract
In this paper I critically evaluate Reisman and Forber’s (Philos Sci 72(5):1113-1123, <xref>2005</xref>) arguments that drift and natural selection are population-level causes of evolution based on what they call the manipulation condition. Although I agree that this condition is an important step for identifying causes for evolutionary change, it is insufficient. Following Woodward, I argue that the invariance of a relationship is another crucial parameter to take into consideration for causal explanations. Starting from Reisman and Forber’s example on drift and after having briefly presented the criterion of invariance, I show that once both the manipulation condition and the criterion of invariance are taken into account, drift, in this example, should better be understood as an individual-level rather than a population-level cause. Later, I concede that it is legitimate to interpret natural selection and drift as population-level causes when they rely on genuinely indeterministic events and some cases of frequency-dependent selection.
- Subjects
NATURAL selection; EVOLUTIONARY theories; CAUSALITY (Physics); PROBABILITY theory; MATHEMATICAL symmetry
- Publication
Acta Biotheoretica, 2018, Vol 66, Issue 3, p159
- ISSN
0001-5342
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10441-018-9331-1