Download the Syllabus

Description:

This course focuses on evolutionary theory, and in particular, on natural selection and how it operates. We examine debates about fitness, whether selection is a cause or force, individuality in biology, the units and levels of selection, and extentions of evolutionary theory into the realm of culture.

Requirements:

Attendance in class and participation in discussion, are required and will affect your grade. There will be one short paper, one medium-length paper, and one longer final paper.

Office hours:

My office hours are Tues 11:00-12:00 and Wed 1:30-2:30, or by appointment, in 92B on the second floor of building 90 in the main quad.

Books available at the university bookstore:

Elliott Sober, Philosophy of Biology, Westview Press, 2nd edition (= Sober)
Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Norton, 3rd edition (= Dawkins)
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, Oxford University Press (= PGS).

Reading Schedule:

Unit 1: Evolution and Creationism

Mon, Jan 4
- Introductions
Wed, Jan 6
- Required Readings
  - Sober ch 1
  - PGS ch 1
- Extra Readings
  - Pigliucci, The Borderlands Between Science and Philosophy: An Introduction
  - Weinberg, Against Philosophy
  - Sober, Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism
Mon, Jan 11
- Required Readings
  - Paley, pages 1-20 of Natural Theology (here for printing)
  - Darwin, pages 186-190 of The Origin (here for printing)
  - Dawkins ch 1-4
- Extra Reading
  - Paley, ch 3 (how the eye and other organs work)
Wed, Jan 13

Required Readings
- Sober ch 2
- Behe, Molecular Machines (here is an older version that has the pictures referred to plus some citation notes)
- Sober, What’s wrong with ID
Extra Reading
- Sober, The Design Argument (the longer version of Sober's critique of ID)
- Sober, Evidence and Evolution ch 2 (the longest version of Sober's critique of ID)
- Behe, irreducible complexity - obstacle to Darwinian evolution
- Dembski, A Defense of Intelligent Design
- Nagel, Public education and intelligent design
- Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Unit 2: Characterizing Fitness and Natural Selection

Mon, Jan 18 No Class (MLK day)
Tue, Jan 19 (originally scheduled for Wed the 20th)
- Required Reading
  - Sober ch 3
  - Mills and Beatty, The Propensity Interpretation of Fitness
- Extra Reading
  - Brandon, Natural Selection From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  - Rosenberg and Bouchard, Fitness From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  - Darwin, Chapters 3 and 4 (On natural selection)
  - Bethell, Darwin's Mistake
  - Gould, Darwin's untimely burial
  - Beatty and Finsen, Rethinking the Propensity Interpretation of Fitness
  - Dawkins, ch 5
Mon, Jan 25
- Required Reading
  - Sober, Two Faces of Fitness
  - Ariew and Lewontin, The Confusions of Fitness
- Extra Reading
  - Ernst and Ariew, What Fitness Ain’t
  - Abrams, The Unity of Fitness
  - Orr, Absolute Fitness, Relative Fitness, and Utility
  - Orr, Fitness and its Role in Evolutionary Genetics
Wed, Jan 27
- PAPER DUE!! (assignment)
- Required Reading
  - PGS ch 2
- Extra Reading
  - Matthen and Ariew, Two Ways of Thinking about Fitness and Natural Selection
  - Stephens, Selection, Drift, and the Forces of Evolution
  - Millstein, Are Random Drift and Natural Selection Conceptually Distinct
  - Lewens, The Natures of Selection
Mon, Feb 1
- Required Reading
  - Walsh, Ariew, and Lewens, The Trials of Life
  - Millstein, Natural Selection as a Population Level Cause
- Extra Reading
  - Sober, from The Nature of Selection, (selection of vs. selection for)
  - Walsh, Chasing Shadows: Natural Selection and Adaptation
  - Bouchard and Rosenberg, Fitness, Probability and the Principles of Natural Selection
  - Shapiro and Sober, Epiphenomenalism the Do's and Don't's
  - Matthen and Ariew, Causation and Selection
  - Millstein and Skipper, (Mis)representing Mathematical Models: Drift as a Physical Process
    - Here is the blog for the journal where Ariew, Matthen, and others respond
  - Rank, Hierarchical Analysis of Genetic Differentiation
  - Dahlhoff and Rank, Functional and Physiological Consequences of Genetic Variation
  - Rank and Dalhoff, Allele Frequency Shifts in Response to Climate Change
  - Beatty, Chance and Natural Selection
  - Hodge, Natural Selection as a Causal, Empirical, and Probabilistic Theory
Wed, Feb 3
- Required Reading
  - PGS ch 3
  - Dawkins ch 7
- Extra Reading
  - Lewontin, Adaptation (from The Dialectical Biologist)
  - Sober, from The Nature of Selection (on explanation)
  - Neander, Pruning the Tree of Life
  - Forber, On the Explanatory Roles of Natural Selection
  - Pigliucci, Sewall Wright's adaptive landscapes: 1932 vs. 1938
  - Plutynski, The Rise and Fall of the Adaptive Landscape?
  - Kaplan, The End of the Adaptive Landscape Metaphor?

Unit 3: Individuality

Mon, Feb 8 class is canceled
Tue, Feb 9 or Fri, Feb 12 (1-2:15)
- Required Reading
  - PGS ch 4
  - Janzen, What are Dandelions and Aphids?
- Extra Reading
  - Van Dijk, et al., An Apomixis-Gene’s View on Dandelions
  - O'Malley and Dupré, Size Doesn't Matter: Toward a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology
  - Dupré and O'Malley, Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism
  - Szathmary and Maynard Smith, The Major Evolutionary Transitions
  - Wilson, The Biological Notion of an Individual From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Wed, Feb 10
- Required Reading
  - Hull, A Matter of Individuality
  - Mishler and Brandon, Individuality, Pluralism, and the Phylogenetic Species Concept
- Extra Reading
  - Ghiselin, A Radical Solution to the Species Problem
  - Hull, Are Species Really Individuals?
  - Mishler and Donoghue, Species Concepts: A Case for Pluralism
  - Velasco, Species Concepts Should not Conflict with Evolutionary History, But Often Do
  - Crane, On the Metaphysics of Species
  - Wilson, Realism, Essence, and Kind: Resuscitating Traditional Species Essentialism?
  - Wilson, Barker, and Brigandt, When Traditional Essentialism Fails: Biological Natural Kinds
  - Sober, parts of Chapter 6 of Philosophy of Biology
Mon, Feb 15 No Class (Presidents' Day)
Wed, Feb 17
- PAPER DUE!! (assignment)
- Required Reading
  - PGS ch 5
  - Hamilton et al. Social Insects and the Individuality Thesis: Cohesion and the Colony as a Selectable Individual
- Extra Reading
  - Wilson and Sober, Reviving the Superorganism

Unit 4: The Units and Levels of Selection

Mon, Feb 22
- Required Readings
  - Lewontin, The Units of Selection
  - Sober ch 4
- Extra Readings
  - Hamilton, The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior
  - Williams, Excerpts from Adaptation and Natural Selection
  - Wilson, Levels of Selection: An Alternative to individualism in biology and the human sciences
  - Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (chap 1)
  - Axelrod and Hamilton, The evolution of cooperation
  - Sober and Lewontin, Artifact, Cause, and Genic Selection
  - Sober, What is Evolutionary Altruism
  - Wilson, Relationship of Biological and Psychological Altruism
  - Stich, Evolution, Altruism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critique of Sober and Wilson’s Argument for Psychological Altruism
  - Schulz, Sober & Wilson’s Evolutionary Arguments for Psychological Altruism: A Reassessment
  - Okasha, Biological Altruism From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  - Muir and Craig, Improving animal well-being through genetic selection
  - Wilson, Arguing about Group Selection: Myxoma From Genes and the Agents of Life
Wed, Feb 24
- Required Readings
  - Sterelny and Kitcher, The Return of the Gene
  - Sober, section 5.2 of Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards?
- Extra Readings
  - Sober, The Poverty of Pluralism: A Reply to Sterelny and Kitcher
  - Kitcher, Sterelny, and Waters, The Illusory Riches of Sober's Monism
  - Maynard Smith, How to Model Evolution
  - Sober, Maynard Smith responses
  - Lloyd, Why the Gene Will Not Return
  - Waters, Why Genic and Multilevel Selection Theories Are Here to Stay
  - Kerr and Godfrey-Smith, Individualist and Multi-level Perspectives on Selection in Structured Populations
Mon, Mar 1
- Required Readings
  - PGS ch 6
  - Okasha, Multilevel Selection and the Major Transitions in Evolution
- Extra Readings
  - Wilson and Wilson, Rethinking the foundations of Sociobiology
  - Okasha, Recent work on units of selection
  - Szathmary and Maynard Smith, The Major Evolutionary Transitions
  - Szathmary, The First Replicators
  - Michod, Individuality, Immortality, and Sex
Wed, Mar 3
- Required Readings
- Extra Readings
  - Dawkins, The Replicators, ch 2 of The Selfish Gene
  - Dawkins, Replicator Selection and the Extended Phenotype
  - Godfrey-Smith, The Replicator in Retrospect
  - Several chapters from Sterelny and Griffith, Sex and Death (on reserve in Tanner Library)
  - Doolitte and Sapienza, Selfish Genes, the Phenotype Paradigm, and Genome Evolution
  - Griffiths and Stolz, Gene (from Cambridge Companion to Biology)
  - Griffiths and Gray, Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation
  - Sterelny, Smith, and Dickison, The Extended Replicator
  - Griffiths and Gray, Replicator II: Judgment Day
  - Sterelny, Development, Adaptation, and Evolution

Unit 5: Expansions of Natural Selection

Mon, Mar 8
- Required Readings
  - Sober, ch 7
- Extra Readings
  - Lewontin, Analysis of Variance, Analysis of Causes
  - Sober, Apportioning Causal Responsibility
  - Block, How Heritability Misleads about Race
  - Sesardic, Philosophy of Science that Ignores Science: Race, Heritability, and IQ
  - Longino, Evidence in the Sciences of Behavior
  - Downes, Heritability (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  - Holcomb and Byron, Sociobiology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  - Downes, Evolutionary Psychology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  - Ruse and Wilson, Moral Philosophy as Applied Science
  - Kitcher, Four Ways of "Biologicizing" Ethics
  - Ayala, What the Biological Sciences Can and Cannot Contribute to Ethics
  - Ruse, The Biological Sciences Can Act as a Ground for Ethics
Wed, Mar 10
- Required Readings
  - PGS ch 8
- Extra Readings
  - Lewens, Cultural Evolution (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  - Fracchi and Lewontin, Does Culture Evolve
  - Skyrms, Sex and Justice
  - Skyrms, Darwin Meets the Logic of Decision
  - Ernst, Explaining the Social Contract
  - Durham, The Adaptive Significance of Cultural Behavior
  - Durham, Advances in Evolutionary Culture Theory
  - Durham, Applications of Evolutionary Culture Theory
  - Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson, Five Misunderstandings about Cultural Evolution
  - Plus lots of work from Rob Boyd's publication's page: here
  - Pigliucci, Review of PGS Darwinian Populations
  - Odenbaugh review of PGS

Extra topics you might be interested in:

Adaptationism
- Gould and Lewontin, The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme
- Maynard Smith, Optimization Theory in Evolution
- Sober, chapter 5
- Godfrey-Smith, Three Kinds of Adaptationism
Major Transitions
Epigenetics
- Jablonka and Lamb, Precis of Evolution in Four Dimensions
- Dawkins, ch 11
Evolution of Cognition
- Sterelny, Thought in a Hostile World