Philosophy of Biology

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to address the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological questions bearing on the foundations of today’s life sciences. It discusses the main themes of the philosophy of evolutionary biology, asking what is meant by the idea of adaptation and reviewing the various answers to the units of selection problem. The latter considers on which biological entities—genes, genomes, cells, organisms, groups, species, and so forth—natural selection operates and is a nice illustration of how philosophy of biology situates itself at the frontier between philosophy and the most theoretical parts of biology. The chapter also presents recent debates over the notions of genetic programming and organismal development and the reduction of macromolecular biology to molecular biology.