(Ebook) Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection by Peter Godfrey-Smith ISBN 9780199552047, 0199552045

(Ebook) Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection by Peter Godfrey-Smith ISBN 9780199552047, 0199552045

 *Eagerly awaited work from a leading figure in the field.   *Guides the reader carefully through the latest research on natural selection.   *Lively and readable. - no expertise in philosophy or biology required.

This ambitious book develops a novel framework for analysing putatively Darwinian populations and the extent to which their behaviours over time ought to match paradigm examples of evolution shaped by natural selection.

Godfrey-Smith’s approach is novel. He treats populations as conceptually prior to the individuals of which they are composed, and develops a series of parameters for evaluating the extent to which individuals and populations match the standards for being ‘Darwinian’.

This enables him to model changing populations in a variety of state spaces of varying degrees of specificity and to set forth critical evaluations of the extent to which a population (or ensemble of populations) fits conditions for Darwinian evolution and various ways of departing from Darwinian expectations.

The book is admirable for clarity of exposition, the ease with which it passes between serious biological examples and abstract treatments of evolutionary thinking, and the extent of its coverage of standard positions in philosophy of biology.

For example, Godfrey-Smith’s apparatus handles, elegantly, ‘gene’s-eye’ accounts of evolution; controversies over the units and levels of selection and evolution; issues surrounding evolutionary transitions and Darwinian analyses of social evolution; and analyses of such key concepts as fitness, heritability, individuality, reproduction, replication, segregation of the germ line and the like.

Cumulatively, his analysis allows him to handle key disputes, first with simple models, then with increasing sophistication, as he develops his apparatus, gradually setting up his own views about some key problems in philosophy of biology.