Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T07:09:19.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Indeterministic Character of Evolutionary Theory: No “No Hidden Variables Proof” But no Room For Determinism Either

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robert N. Brandon  and
Scott Carson
Robert N. Brandon
Affiliation:
Departments of Philosophy and Zoology, Duke University
Scott Carson
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Duke University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this paper we first briefly review Bell's (1964, 1966) Theorem to see how it invalidates any deterministic “hidden variable” account of the apparent indeterminacy of quantum mechanics (QM). Then we show that quantum uncertainty, at the level of DNA mutations, can “percolate” up to have major populational effects. Interesting as this point may be it does not show any autonomous indeterminism of the evolutionary process. In the next two sections we investigate drift and natural selection as the locus of autonomous biological indeterminacy. Here we conclude that the population-level indeterminacy of natural selection and drift are ultimately based on the assumption of a fundamental indeterminacy at the level of the lives and deaths of individual organisms. The following section examines this assumption and defends it from the determinists' attack. Then we show that, even if one rejects the assumption, there is still an important reason why one might think evolutionary theory (ET) is autonomously indeterministic. In the concluding section we contrast the arguments we have mounted against a deterministic hidden variable account of ET with the proof of the impossibility of such an account of QM.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 315 - 337
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

†

We wish to thank John Beatty, Alex Rosenberg and Elliott Sober for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

‡

Send reprint requests to the authors, Department of Philosophy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708.

References

Albert, D. Z. (1992), Quantum Mechanics and Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J. (1984), “Chance and Natural Selection”, Philosophy of Science 51:183–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beatty, J., and Finsen, S. (1989), “Rethinking The Propensity Interpretation”, in Ruse, M. (ed.), What the Philosophy of Biology Is: Essays for David Hull. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer, pp. 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, J. S. (1964), “On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox”, Physics 1:195–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, J. S. (1966), “On the Problem of Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics”, Reviews of Modern Physics 38:447–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bever, J. D. (1994), “Feedback Between Plants and Their Soil Communities in an Old Field Community”, Ecology 75:1965–1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bohm, D. (1951), Quantum Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. N. (1978), “Adaptation and Evolutionary Theory”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 9:181–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandon, R. N. (1990), Adaptation and Environment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. N. (1996), Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brandon, R. N., and Beatty, J. (1984), “The Propensity Interpretation of ‘Fitness’: No Interpretation is no Substitute”, Philosophy of Science 51:342–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burian, R. (1983), “Adaptation”, in Grene, M. (ed.), Dimensions of Darwinism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 287–314.Google Scholar
Clauser, J. F., and Shimony, A. (1978), “Bell's Theorem: Experimental Tests and Implications”, Reports on Progress in Physics 41:1881–1927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cushing, J. T. (1989), “A Background Essay”, In Cushing and McMullin (1989), pp. 1–24.Google Scholar
Cushing, J. T. and McMullin, E. (1989), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem: Studies in Science and the Humanities from the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, volume 2. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Galton, F. (1889), Natural Inheritance, London and New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gillespie, J. H. (1977), “Natural Selection for Variances in Offspring Number: A New Evolutionary Principle”, American Naturalist 111:1010–1014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, I. (1990), The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horan, B. (1994), “The Statistical Character of Evolutionary Theory”, Philosophy of Science 61:76–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, R. I. G. (1989) The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauffman, S. A. (1993), The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1989), “Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World”, In Kitcher and Salmon (1989), pp. 410–505.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. and Salmon, W. C. (eds.) (1989), Scientific Explanation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Mermin, N. D. (1989), “Can You Help Your Team Tonight by Watching on TV? More Experimental Metaphysics from Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen”, In Cushing and McMullin (1989), pp. 38–59.Google Scholar
Mills, S., and Beatty, J. (1979), “The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness”, Philosophy of Science 46:263–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richardson, R. C., and Burian, R. M. (1992), “A Defense of the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness”, in Hull, D., Forbes, M. and Okruhlik, K. (eds.), PSA 1992, Vol. 2. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1985), The Structure of Biological Science. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1988), “Is the Theory of Natural Selection a Statistical Theory?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Suppl.) 14:187–207.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, A. (1994), Instrumental Biology or the Disunity of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Roughgarden, J. (1979), Theory of Population Genetics and Evolutionary Theory: An Introduction. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1989), “Four Decades of Scientific Explanation”, In Kitcher and Salmon (1989), pp. 3–219.Google Scholar
Schilpp, P. A. (ed.) (1949), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Sober, E. (1984), The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Weinberg, S. (1992), Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar