Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:30:41.846Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Critical Review: Sober's Philosophy of Biology and his Philosophy of Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alex Rosenberg
Alex Rosenberg*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosphy, University of Georgia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An examination of the foundations of Elliot Sober's philosophy of biology as reflected in his introductory textbook of that title reveals substantial and controversial philosphical commitments. Among these are the claim that all understanding is historical, the assertion that there are biological laws but they are necessary truths, the view that the fundamental theory in biology is a narrative, and the suggestion that biology adverts to ungrounded probablistic propensities of the sort to be met with elsewhere only in quantum mechanics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 452 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

The author wishes to thank Elliot Sober, Philip Kitcher and two anonymous referees for comments and criticisms on a previous draft, two anonymous referees for other improvements, and Balliol College, Oxford for hospitality during the period he worked on this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Academic Building, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-6112.

References

Beatty, J. and Finsen [née Mills], S. (1989), “Rethinking the Propensity Interpretation: A Peak Inside Pandora's Box”, in Ruse, M. (ed.), What the Philosophy of Biology Is. Boston: Kluwer, pp. 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goudge, T. (1961), The Ascent of Life. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Hull, D. (1989), Science as a Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kim, J. (1993), Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1984), The Structure of Biological Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1994), Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), The Nature of Selection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1993), The Philosophy of Biology. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1994), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Waters, C. K. (1991), “Tempered Realism about the Forces of Selection,” Philosophy of Science 58: 553–573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar