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How the Concept of Population Resolves Concepts of Environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Roberta L. Millstein
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Abstract

Elsewhere, I defend the “causal interactionist population concept” (CIPC). Here I further defend the CIPC by showing how it clarifies another concept that biologists grapple with, namely, environment. Should we understand selection as ranging only over homogeneous environments or, alternatively, as ranging over any habitat area we choose to study? I argue instead that the boundaries of the population dictate the range of the environment, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, over which selection operates. Thus, understanding the concept of population helps us to understand concepts of selective environment, exemplifying the importance of the CIPC to other concepts and debates.

Type
Biological Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , December 2014 , pp. 741 - 755
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to the Griesemer/Millstein Lab at UC Davis, members of the audience at the San Francisco State University workshop, “The Experimental Side of Modeling,” and members of the audience at PSA 2012 for helpful comments on earlier stages of this work. Thanks also to Frédéric Bouchard, Mathieu Charbonneau, and Lisa Gannett for a wonderful PSA session and for many fun and challenging conversations about populations. Thanks to Peter Gildenhuys and Bruce Glymour for helpful comments on my post-PSA draft.

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