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Implications of Use of Wright's FST for the Role of Probability and Causation in Evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Marshall Abrams
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Abstract

Sewall Wright's is a mathematical test used to characterize differences between biological populations and identify causes of those differences. I discuss Cockerham and Weir's popular, empirically successful approach to statistical estimation of , arguing that their assumption that actual populations are sampled from an infinite set of counterfactual populations (with a common ancestral population) supports a view of natural selection and genetic drift as distinct causes. I also argue that the way in which F-statistics and other statistical tests are applied to computer simulations in empirical research shows that selection and drift correspond to differences in objective, causal probabilities.

Type
Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 596 - 608
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Bruce Weir, Kent Holsinger, and Yoichi Ishida for feedback and stimulating discussion concerning the ideas discussed here and for their participation in the symposium “Sewall Wright's F-Statistics: Measurement of Biological Population Structure and Its Causes.” I am grateful for feedback from audience members at that event, including but not limited to Bruce Glymour and Frederic Bouchard, and for comments from anonymous reviewers. David Allison and Yann Klimentidis deserve thanks for involving me in a scientific collaboration that eventually led to this research. None of these individuals should be blamed for this paper's faults.

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