Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from ot... more Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from others. But how should we understand this concept? What is the nature of a species? Some take our nature to be an essence and argue that because humans lack an essence, they also lack a nature. Others argue for nonessentialist ways of understanding human nature, which usually aim to provide criteria for sorting human traits into one of two bins, the one belonging to our nature and the other outside our nature. This Element argues that both the essentialist and trait bin approaches are misguided. Instead, the author develops a trait cluster account of human nature, which holds that human nature is based on the distribution of our traits over our (actual and possible) life histories. One benefit of this account is that it aligns human nature with the human sciences, rendering the central concern of the human sciences to be the study of human nature. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
It has become increasingly common to explain the behavior of animals-from sperm whales to songbir... more It has become increasingly common to explain the behavior of animals-from sperm whales to songbirds-in terms of culture. But what is animal culture, what is its relationship to other biological concepts and to human culture, and what impact does culture have on a species' evolution and ecology? My dissertation is an attempt to answer these questions. After an introductory chapter, the dissertation begins (Chapter 2) with a proposal for a novel concept of culture and a critique of the existing ways in which culture has been characterized. These characterizations include views from cultural anthropology as well as attempts to apply the concept of culture to animals. The existing concepts are problematic in a number of ways, such as a priori excluding infrahumans from being candidates for possessing culture, or mistaking what culture is for its measure. In this chapter I offer a way to understand culture that avoids these and other problems. With a concept of culture in hand, the next chapter of my dissertation (Chapter 3) examines and criticizes one key way of understanding the concept of culture, meme theory. In Chapter 4 I turn to the question of how cultural systems can arise in nature, how they can be adaptive, and how the evolution and ecology of species is impacted by the possession of a cultural system. In order to answer these questions I introduce a general constraint on cultural systems-what I am calling the Fundamental Constraint-that has to be satisfied in order for cultural systems to be adaptive. In the final chapter I develop a concept of innovation and draw out the conceptual and empirical implications of this concept. v out the conceptual and empirical implications of this concept. (A paper based on Chapter 5 is a forthcoming target article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. This article was coauthored with Carel van Schaik and Meredith Bastian and therefore uses the first person plural.
The commentaries have both drawn out the implications of, and challenged, our definition and oper... more The commentaries have both drawn out the implications of, and challenged, our definition and operationalization of innovation. In this response, we reply to these concerns, discuss the differences between our operationalization and the preexisting operationalization if innovation, and make suggestions for the advancement of the challenging and exciting field of animal innovation
Niche construction is the process of organisms changing themselves or their environment-or their ... more Niche construction is the process of organisms changing themselves or their environment-or their relationship with their environment-in ways that affect the evolutionary trajectory of their population. These evolutionary trajectory changes are traditionally understood to be triggered by changes in selection pressures. Niche construction thus necessarily involves organisms altering selection pressures. In this paper, we argue that changes in selection pressures is not the only way organisms can influence the evolutionary futures of their population. We propose that organisms can also affect drift probabilities, and that such changes should be considered niche construction. Drift probabilities can be modulated by altering population size or by affecting driftability (individual variance in possible reproductive outcomes). We consider both and provide examples of how niche construction can stabilize, increase, or dampen drift probabilities. Finally, we revisit and broaden the traditional definition of niche construction. We hold that organismic activities that modify drift probabilities should count as niche construction, even if selection pressures remain unaltered.
Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution, Mar 1, 2024
The chin, a distinguishing feature of Homo sapiens, has sparked ongoing debates regarding its evo... more The chin, a distinguishing feature of Homo sapiens, has sparked ongoing debates regarding its evolutionary origins and adaptive significance. We contend that these controversies stem from a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes a well-defined biological trait, a problem that has received insufficient attention despite its recognized importance in biology. In this paper, we leverage paleoanthropological research on the human chin to investigate the general issue of character or trait identification. First, we examine four accounts of the human chin from the existing literature: the mandibular differential growth byproduct, the bony prominence, the inverted T-relief, and the symphyseal angle. We then generalize from these accounts and propose a three-stage framework for the process of character identification: description, detection, and justification. We use this framework to reinterpret the four accounts, elucidating key points of contention surrounding the chin as well as other morphological characters. We show that debates over the chin carry broad and important biological implications that extend beyond this trait and that are not mere semantic issues of definition.
The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Dec 28, 2023
Theoretical frameworks concerning cell fate typically center on proximate causes to explain how c... more Theoretical frameworks concerning cell fate typically center on proximate causes to explain how cells know what type they are meant to become. While major advances in cell fate theory have been achieved by these mechanism-focused frameworks, there are some aspects of cell decision-making that require an evolutionary interpretation. While mechanistic biologists sometimes turn to evolutionary theory to gain insights about cell fate (cancer is a good example), it is not entirely clear in cell fate theory what insights evolutionary theory can add, and why in some cases it is required for understanding cell fate. In this perspective we draw on our work on cellular mortality to illustrate how evolutionary theory provides an explanation for death being selected as one of the potential cell fates. Using our hypothesis for why some microbes in a community choose death as their fate, we suggest that some insights in cell fate theory are inaccessible to a theoretical framework that focuses solely on proximate causes.
Philosophy of science is beginning to be expanded via the introduction of new digital resources-b... more Philosophy of science is beginning to be expanded via the introduction of new digital resources-both data and tools for its analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished and recently digitized material, such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. This growing bounty of data would be of little use, however, without quality tools with which to analyze it. Fortunately, the growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. For the beginner, this wide variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this essay, we survey the state of digital work in the philosophy of science, showing what kinds of questions can be answered and how one can go about answering them.
History and Philosophy of The Life Sciences, Jun 1, 2023
Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as n... more Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units-cells-and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death-often labeled programmed cell death, PCD-originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality.
Adaptationism is often taken to be the thesis that most traits are adaptations. To assess this th... more Adaptationism is often taken to be the thesis that most traits are adaptations. To assess this thesis, it seems we must be able to establish either an exhaustive set of all traits or a representative sample of this set. Either task requires a more systematic and principled way of individuating traits than is currently available. Moreover, different trait individuation criteria can make adaptationism turn out true or false. For instance, individuation based on natural selection may render adaptationism true, but may do so by presupposing adaptationism. In this article, we show how adaptationism depends on trait individuation and that the latter is an open and unsolved problem.
This chapter summarizes a sequence of ways in which, from antiquity to the present, chance has be... more This chapter summarizes a sequence of ways in which, from antiquity to the present, chance has been connected to, or in some cases dissociated from, two related concepts, contingency and randomness. Aristotle’s theory of generation steered a course between chance and necessity by affirming the contingency of reproductive chains without denying their reliability or their purposiveness. This fact supports recent scholarship debunking the idea that everyone before Darwin was a “typological essentialist.” Typological essentialism did exist, but only much later. It arose in the 17th and 18th century, when under the influence of modern physics necessity displaced contingency and chance was reduced to ignorance of deterministic causes. Darwin revived the contingency of reproductive lineages and the purposiveness of organic traits by innovatively inserting an element of chance between the origin of variation and its adaptive utility. His analysis has been amply confirmed by the discovery of...
A brief presentation on the current state of the evoText digital humanities project for use in th... more A brief presentation on the current state of the evoText digital humanities project for use in the history and philosophy of biology.
In this presentation, we will offer some recent results from our use of evoText. We will discuss ... more In this presentation, we will offer some recent results from our use of evoText. We will discuss several examples of the kind of benefits that can be drawn from use of textual analysis in the philosophy of science, drawn from our own work in the history and philosophy of biology.
Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their a... more Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished material such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. The growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. The variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this article, we survey the state of digital work in the philosophy of science, showing what kinds of questions can be answered and how one can go about answering them.
Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from ot... more Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from others. But how should we understand this concept? What is the nature of a species? Some take our nature to be an essence and argue that because humans lack an essence, they also lack a nature. Others argue for nonessentialist ways of understanding human nature, which usually aim to provide criteria for sorting human traits into one of two bins, the one belonging to our nature and the other outside our nature. This Element argues that both the essentialist and trait bin approaches are misguided. Instead, the author develops a trait cluster account of human nature, which holds that human nature is based on the distribution of our traits over our (actual and possible) life histories. One benefit of this account is that it aligns human nature with the human sciences, rendering the central concern of the human sciences to be the study of human nature. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
It has become increasingly common to explain the behavior of animals-from sperm whales to songbir... more It has become increasingly common to explain the behavior of animals-from sperm whales to songbirds-in terms of culture. But what is animal culture, what is its relationship to other biological concepts and to human culture, and what impact does culture have on a species' evolution and ecology? My dissertation is an attempt to answer these questions. After an introductory chapter, the dissertation begins (Chapter 2) with a proposal for a novel concept of culture and a critique of the existing ways in which culture has been characterized. These characterizations include views from cultural anthropology as well as attempts to apply the concept of culture to animals. The existing concepts are problematic in a number of ways, such as a priori excluding infrahumans from being candidates for possessing culture, or mistaking what culture is for its measure. In this chapter I offer a way to understand culture that avoids these and other problems. With a concept of culture in hand, the next chapter of my dissertation (Chapter 3) examines and criticizes one key way of understanding the concept of culture, meme theory. In Chapter 4 I turn to the question of how cultural systems can arise in nature, how they can be adaptive, and how the evolution and ecology of species is impacted by the possession of a cultural system. In order to answer these questions I introduce a general constraint on cultural systems-what I am calling the Fundamental Constraint-that has to be satisfied in order for cultural systems to be adaptive. In the final chapter I develop a concept of innovation and draw out the conceptual and empirical implications of this concept. v out the conceptual and empirical implications of this concept. (A paper based on Chapter 5 is a forthcoming target article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences. This article was coauthored with Carel van Schaik and Meredith Bastian and therefore uses the first person plural.
The commentaries have both drawn out the implications of, and challenged, our definition and oper... more The commentaries have both drawn out the implications of, and challenged, our definition and operationalization of innovation. In this response, we reply to these concerns, discuss the differences between our operationalization and the preexisting operationalization if innovation, and make suggestions for the advancement of the challenging and exciting field of animal innovation
Niche construction is the process of organisms changing themselves or their environment-or their ... more Niche construction is the process of organisms changing themselves or their environment-or their relationship with their environment-in ways that affect the evolutionary trajectory of their population. These evolutionary trajectory changes are traditionally understood to be triggered by changes in selection pressures. Niche construction thus necessarily involves organisms altering selection pressures. In this paper, we argue that changes in selection pressures is not the only way organisms can influence the evolutionary futures of their population. We propose that organisms can also affect drift probabilities, and that such changes should be considered niche construction. Drift probabilities can be modulated by altering population size or by affecting driftability (individual variance in possible reproductive outcomes). We consider both and provide examples of how niche construction can stabilize, increase, or dampen drift probabilities. Finally, we revisit and broaden the traditional definition of niche construction. We hold that organismic activities that modify drift probabilities should count as niche construction, even if selection pressures remain unaltered.
Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution, Mar 1, 2024
The chin, a distinguishing feature of Homo sapiens, has sparked ongoing debates regarding its evo... more The chin, a distinguishing feature of Homo sapiens, has sparked ongoing debates regarding its evolutionary origins and adaptive significance. We contend that these controversies stem from a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes a well-defined biological trait, a problem that has received insufficient attention despite its recognized importance in biology. In this paper, we leverage paleoanthropological research on the human chin to investigate the general issue of character or trait identification. First, we examine four accounts of the human chin from the existing literature: the mandibular differential growth byproduct, the bony prominence, the inverted T-relief, and the symphyseal angle. We then generalize from these accounts and propose a three-stage framework for the process of character identification: description, detection, and justification. We use this framework to reinterpret the four accounts, elucidating key points of contention surrounding the chin as well as other morphological characters. We show that debates over the chin carry broad and important biological implications that extend beyond this trait and that are not mere semantic issues of definition.
The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Dec 28, 2023
Theoretical frameworks concerning cell fate typically center on proximate causes to explain how c... more Theoretical frameworks concerning cell fate typically center on proximate causes to explain how cells know what type they are meant to become. While major advances in cell fate theory have been achieved by these mechanism-focused frameworks, there are some aspects of cell decision-making that require an evolutionary interpretation. While mechanistic biologists sometimes turn to evolutionary theory to gain insights about cell fate (cancer is a good example), it is not entirely clear in cell fate theory what insights evolutionary theory can add, and why in some cases it is required for understanding cell fate. In this perspective we draw on our work on cellular mortality to illustrate how evolutionary theory provides an explanation for death being selected as one of the potential cell fates. Using our hypothesis for why some microbes in a community choose death as their fate, we suggest that some insights in cell fate theory are inaccessible to a theoretical framework that focuses solely on proximate causes.
Philosophy of science is beginning to be expanded via the introduction of new digital resources-b... more Philosophy of science is beginning to be expanded via the introduction of new digital resources-both data and tools for its analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished and recently digitized material, such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. This growing bounty of data would be of little use, however, without quality tools with which to analyze it. Fortunately, the growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. For the beginner, this wide variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this essay, we survey the state of digital work in the philosophy of science, showing what kinds of questions can be answered and how one can go about answering them.
History and Philosophy of The Life Sciences, Jun 1, 2023
Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as n... more Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units-cells-and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death-often labeled programmed cell death, PCD-originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality.
Adaptationism is often taken to be the thesis that most traits are adaptations. To assess this th... more Adaptationism is often taken to be the thesis that most traits are adaptations. To assess this thesis, it seems we must be able to establish either an exhaustive set of all traits or a representative sample of this set. Either task requires a more systematic and principled way of individuating traits than is currently available. Moreover, different trait individuation criteria can make adaptationism turn out true or false. For instance, individuation based on natural selection may render adaptationism true, but may do so by presupposing adaptationism. In this article, we show how adaptationism depends on trait individuation and that the latter is an open and unsolved problem.
This chapter summarizes a sequence of ways in which, from antiquity to the present, chance has be... more This chapter summarizes a sequence of ways in which, from antiquity to the present, chance has been connected to, or in some cases dissociated from, two related concepts, contingency and randomness. Aristotle’s theory of generation steered a course between chance and necessity by affirming the contingency of reproductive chains without denying their reliability or their purposiveness. This fact supports recent scholarship debunking the idea that everyone before Darwin was a “typological essentialist.” Typological essentialism did exist, but only much later. It arose in the 17th and 18th century, when under the influence of modern physics necessity displaced contingency and chance was reduced to ignorance of deterministic causes. Darwin revived the contingency of reproductive lineages and the purposiveness of organic traits by innovatively inserting an element of chance between the origin of variation and its adaptive utility. His analysis has been amply confirmed by the discovery of...
A brief presentation on the current state of the evoText digital humanities project for use in th... more A brief presentation on the current state of the evoText digital humanities project for use in the history and philosophy of biology.
In this presentation, we will offer some recent results from our use of evoText. We will discuss ... more In this presentation, we will offer some recent results from our use of evoText. We will discuss several examples of the kind of benefits that can be drawn from use of textual analysis in the philosophy of science, drawn from our own work in the history and philosophy of biology.
Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their a... more Philosophy of science is expanding via the introduction of new digital data and tools for their analysis. The data comprise digitized published books and journal articles, as well as heretofore unpublished material such as images, archival text, notebooks, meeting notes, and programs. The growth in available data is matched by the extensive development of automated analysis tools. The variety of data sources and tools can be overwhelming. In this article, we survey the state of digital work in the philosophy of science, showing what kinds of questions can be answered and how one can go about answering them.
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Papers by Grant Ramsey