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Similarities and Differences between Evolutionary Theory and the Theories of Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2022

Mary B. Williams
Mary B. Williams*
Affiliation:
University of Delaware
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Extract

In the 1950's and 60's there arose a plethora of claims that the structure of evolutionary theory was intrinsically different from the structures of the theories of physics—and thus from the structure that philosophers of science claimed to be the structure of scientific theories. There were claims:

  1. 1) that evolutionary theory had no laws (Smart 1963);

  2. 2) that evolutionary concepts were so peculiar that their definitions violated the ordinary standards for definitions (Beckner 1959);

  3. 3) that evolutionary theory was not axiomatizable (Beckner 1959);

  4. 4) that evolutionary theory made no falsifiable predictions (Scriven 1959, Manser 1965, Smart 1963);

  5. 5) that evolutionary biology relied on teleological explanations which violated the deductive-nomological explanation form (Hempel 1965); and

  6. 6) that evolutionary biology made significant use of narrative explanations which also violated the deductive-nomological explanation form (Goudge 1961)

Type
Part VII. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1980 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1980 , 1980 , pp. 385 - 396
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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