Reading Group

The 'Representing Evolution' reading group takes place bi-weekly at the University of Bristol

1

Veit, W. Complexity and the Evolution of Consciousness. Biol Theory (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-022-00407-z

2

Okasha, S. Goal Attributions in Biology: Objective Fact, Anthropomorphic Bias, or Valuable Heuristic? (Forthcoming)

3

Suárez, M. (2010). Scientific representation. Philosophy Compass, 5(1), 91-101. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00261.x

4

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2006). The strategy of model-based science. Biology and Philosophy, 21(5), 725-740. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-006-9054-6.

5

Picturing Weismannism: A Case Study of Conceptual Evolution

by Griesemer and Wimsatt

6

Olson, M. E., Arroyo-Santos, A., & Vergara-Silva, F. (2019). A user’s guide to metaphors in ecology and evolution. Trends in ecology & evolution, 34(7), 605-615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2019.03.001

7

Cognitive bias (article by Varella, M.A.C. (2018) “The Biology and Evolution of the Three Psychological Tendencies to Anthropomorphize Biology and Evolution”, Frontiers in Psychology 9, 1839

8

Gonzalez Galli, L. M. and Meinardi, E. N. (2011) “The Role of Teleological Thinking in Learning the Darwinian Model of Evolution”, Evolution: Education and Outreach 4, 145–152. https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-010-0272-7

9

“Two-Thousand Years of Stasis”: How Psychological Essentialism Impedes Evolutionary Understanding by Susan A. Gelman and Marjorie Rhodes. https://academic.oup.com/book/12041/chapter/161342831

10

-Sober, Elliott. 2001. “The Two Faces of Fitness.” In Thinking about Evolution: Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives volume 2

-Hansen TF. On the definition and measurement of fitness in finite populations. J Theor Biol. 2017 Apr 21;419:36-43. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2016.12.024

11

G. Wagner, The Measurement Theory of Fitness. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00909.x

12

J. Brommer, "The Evolution of Fitness in Life-History Theory" (attached).

https://doi.org/10.1017/S000632310000551X

13

Abrams M (2012) Measured, modeled, and causal conceptions of fitness. Front. Gene. 3:196. doi:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgene.2012.00196/full

14

Sterelny, K. (2017). Cultural evolution in California and Paris. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 62, 42–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2016.12.005

15

Lewens, Tim, 'What is Cultural Evolutionary Theory?', Chapter 1 Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges (Oxford, 2015; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Sept. 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199674183.003.0002

16

Godfrey-Smith, Peter, 'Cultural Evolution', Chapter 8 Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199552047.003.0008

17

Heyes, C. (2020). Culture. Current Biology, 30(20), R12460-R1250.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.086

18

Creanza, N,. Kolodny, O., & Feldman, M. W. (2017). Cultural evolutionary theory: How culture evolves and why it matters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(30), 7782-7789. https://doi.org.10.1073/pnas.1620732114

19

Smith D. Cultural group selection and human cooperation: a conceptual and empirical review. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2020;2e2. doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.2

20

O'Brien, M. J., & Lymn, R. L. (2002). Evolutionary archeology: Current status and future prospects. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News and Reviews, 11(1), 26-36. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10007

21

Waters, C. K. (2007). Causes that Make a Difference. The Journal of Philosophy, 104(11), 551-579. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20620058

22

Woodward, J. (2010), Causation in biology: Stability, specificity and the choice of levels of explanation. Biology and Philosophy, 25(3), 287-318. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-010-9200-z

23

Pain, R., & Planer, R. Explaining Transitions in Human Behavioural Evolution: An Interventionist Perspective (draft)

24

Ross, L. N. (2021). Causal Concepts in Biology: How Pathways Differ from Mechanisms and Why It Matters. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 72(1), 131-158. https://doi.org/10.1093/bips/axy078

25

Otsuka, J. (2015). Using causal models to integrate proximate and ultimate causation. Biology & Philosophy, 30(1), 19-37. https://doi.org.10.1007.s10539-014-9448-9

26

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8(2), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.100

27

Halperin, T., & Levy, A. (2024). What, If Anything, Is Biological Altruism? The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 75(2), 465–486. https://doi.org/10.1086/716097

28

Sterelny, K. (2024). Cultural Evolution, Niche Construction and Ecological Inheritance. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731500

29

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2006). The strategy of model-based science. Biology and Philosophy, 21(5), 725-740. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-006-9054-6.

30

Muller et al., Evolutionary Perspective on Systems of Adaptive Immunity, Biological Reviews 2017. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12355

31

Okasha, S. (2024). Cancer and the Levels of Selection. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 75(3), 537–560. https://doi.org/10.1086/716178

32

Fernando, C. T., Szathmary, E., & Husbands, P. (2012). Selectionist and Evolutionary Approaches to Brain Function: A Critical Appraisal. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2012.00024

33

Garson, J., & Papineau, D. (2019). Teleosemantics, selection and novel contents. Biology & Philosophy, 34(3), 36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9689-8

34

Chapter 1 of Chris Haufe’s 2022 book “How Knowledge Grows”. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14461.003.0006

35

Chapter 8 and 9 of Geoffrey Hodgson’s 2022 book “Evolutionary Economics”.: https://www-cambridge-org.bris.idm.oclc.org/core/elements/evolutionary-economics/229EF6BA5434AB59ADCC1B3F706668BA

36

Miikkulainen, R., & Forrest, S. (2021). A biological perspective on evolutionary computation. Nature Machine Intelligence, 3(1), 9–15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-020-00278-8

37

Pagel, M. (2017). Darwinian perspectives on the evolution of human languages. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 24(1), 151–157. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-016-1072-z

38

Zurek, W. H. (2009). Quantum Darwinism. Nature Physics, 5(3), 181–188. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1202

39

Varella, M. A. C. (2018). The Biology and Evolution of the Three Psychological Tendencies to Anthropomorphize Biology and Evolution. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01839

40

Gelman, S. A., & Rhodes, M. (2012). “Two-Thousand Years of Stasis”: How Psychological Essentialism Impedes Evolutionary Understanding. In K. S. Rosengren, S. K. Brem, E. M. Evans, & G. M. Sinatra (Eds.), Evolution Challenges: Integrating Research and Practice in Teaching and Learning about Evolution (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730421.003.0001

41

Kelemen, D. (2012). Teleological Minds: How Natural Intuitions about Agency and Purpose Influence Learning about Evolution. In K. S. Rosengren, S. K. Brem, E. M. Evans, & G. M. Sinatra (Eds.), Evolution Challenges: Integrating Research and Practice in Teaching and Learning about Evolution (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199730421.003.0004

42

Leslie, S.-J. (2013). Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition. In T. S. Gendler & J. Hawthorne (Eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 4 (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199672707.003.0005

43-47

5 Reading Group sessions spent reading “Darwinizing Gaia”

Samir Okasha, Feb 2nd 2023, The Significance of Mendelism for Evolutionary Theory", Mendel at 200 webinar series, MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Bristol University. https://www.bristol.ac.uk/integrative-epidemiology/seminars/mendel_200/mendel-at-200-webinars/

Video of the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSAq0opYSs

Samir Okasha

“The Significance of Mendelism for Evolutionary Theory”, Bristol MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Bristol. 2nd February 202

Samir Okasha

“Should cancer be viewed through the lens of social evolution theory?"

Workshop: The fitness concept in evolutionary biology: philosophical and scientific aspects. 2024

Overview: Fitness is one of the most fundamental concepts in evolutionary biology, as it is intimately connected with evolution by natural selection. Despite this, the fitness concept is rather elusive, as a number of authors have noted, seemingly lacking a fully general, precise definition. Indeed, it is unclear whether it is right to speak of a single fitness concept at all. There is a large literature in evolutionary biology dealing with how fitness should be defined in different circumstances, and a parallel literature on fitness in philosophy of biology. However these two literatures are less well integrated than they should be. The aim of this workshop is to further the integration.

Speakers

Hanna Kokko (Zurich)

Alan Grafen (Oxford)

Samir Okasha (Bristol)

Bengt Autzen (Cork)

Grant Ramsey (Leuven)

Ellen Clarke (Leeds)

Sean Rice (Texas Tech)

Andy Gardner (St Andrews)

John McNamara (Bristol)

Mauricio Suarez (Madrid)

Hannah Rubin (Missouri)

Thomas Hansen (Oslo)

Marshall Abrams (Birmingham, Alabama)

Workshop: Major transitions in culture and biology. 2023

Since its original conception in the mid-90s (Maynard Smith and Szathmary 1995) the idea of major evolutionary transitions has undergone evolutionary trajectories of its own. While the original formulation targeted a conjunction of events where new units of organisation evolve out of pre-existing ones, and events and where new modes of transferring information across generations evolve (Szathmáry 2015), later formulations have tended to be more coherent in explanatory targets as well as explanatory models, at the cost of scope. Particularly representative here is the derived concept of Evolutionary Transitions in Individuality, which focuses on the evolution of new biological individuals from pre-existing ones (Michod and Herron 2006, Bourke 2011, Calcott and Sterelny 2011, Birch 2017, Okasha 2022) and the closely-related debate around what biological individuality is (Clarke 2010, Pradeu 2016). This remains a lively area of debate within theoretical biology and philosophy of biology, and it continues to inspire similar research outside the realm of biology.

The purpose of this workshop was to stimulate discussion on the topic of major transitions in cultural evolutionary theory (Jablonka and Lamb 2006, Hodgson and Knudsen 2010, Waring and Wood 2021). While the prospects of applying the major transitions framework seem promising, given increasing hierarchical complexity in sociocultural systems over the course of their evolutionary histories, the approach faces challenges. For instance, how should we understand the central concepts of major transitions in biology? How do (or can) these concepts apply in the case of sociocultural processes? What explanatory benefits does major transition thinking offer in biology, and do these benefits transfer when applied to culture? The aim was to interrogate issues in major transitions thinking in biology, and assess the prospects of applying this thinking to sociocultural change.

Speakers:

Samir Okasha

Ross Pain and Christine Balasa

Arsham Nejad Kourki

Richard Moore

Eva Jablonka

Tim Waring

Azita Chellappoo

Adrian Currie and Tyler Brunet

Daniel Lawson

Rachael Brown

Maureen O'Malley

Matthew Herron

David Harrison

Ellen Clarke

Ceri Shipton

Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder