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- Title
Gould's replay revisited.
- Authors
Turner, Derek
- Abstract
This paper develops a critical response to John Beatty's recent () engagement with Stephen Jay Gould's claim that evolutionary history is contingent. Beatty identifies two senses of contingency in Gould's work: an unpredictability sense and a causal dependence sense. He denies that Gould associates contingency with stochastic phenomena, such as drift. In reply to Beatty, this paper develops two main claims. The first is an interpretive claim: Gould really thinks of contingency has having to do with stochastic effects at the level of macroevolution, and in particular with unbiased species sorting. This notion of contingency as macro-level stochasticity incorporates both the causal dependence and the unpredictability senses of contingency. The second claim is more substantive: Recent attempts by other scientists to put Gould's claim to the test fail to engage with the hypothesis that species sorting sometimes resembles a lottery. Gould's claim that random sorting is a significant macroevolutionary phenomenon remains an intriguing and largely untested live hypothesis about evolution.
- Subjects
GOULD, Stephen Jay, 1941-2002; CONTINGENCY (Philosophy); MACROEVOLUTION; HISTORIOGRAPHY; COMPUTER simulation; PROBABILITY theory; PHYLOGENY; PALEOBIOLOGY
- Publication
Biology & Philosophy, 2011, Vol 26, Issue 1, p65
- ISSN
0169-3867
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10539-010-9228-0