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Drift and “Statistically Abstractive Explanation”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Mohan Matthen
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Abstract

A hitherto neglected form of explanation is explored, especially its role in population genetics. “Statistically abstractive explanation” (SA explanation) mandates the suppression of factors probabilistically relevant to an explanandum when these factors are extraneous to the theoretical project being pursued. When these factors are suppressed, the explanandum is rendered uncertain. But this uncertainty traces to the theoretically constrained character of SA explanation, not to any real indeterminacy. Random genetic drift is an artifact of such uncertainty, and it is therefore wrong to reify it as a cause of evolution or as a process in its own right.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 76 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 464 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Andre Ariew, Roberta Millstein, Michael Strevens, and (especially) Denis Walsh for patient discussion. Thanks also to Thomas Basb⊘ll, Joseph Berkowitz, Margie Morrison, and Eric Schliesser for comments on parts of this essay and for sometimes trenchant criticism. Michael Dickson and two anonymous referees (one reporting to a journal that did not accept this piece) provided valuable advice.

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