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Philosophy of Biology

By (author) Brian Garvey

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| book description |

Biology raises distinct questions not only for philosophy of science but for metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. This comprehensive new textbook for a rapidly growing field provides students with an up-to-date presentation of the key philosophical issues. The text is organized in four parts. The first part covers the philosophical challenges posed by evolution and evolutionary biology, beginning with Darwin's central argument in the Origin of Species. Individual chapters cover natural selection, creationism, the selfish gene, alternative units of selection, developmental systems theory, adaptionism, and issues in macroevolution. The second part examines philosophical questions arising in connection with biological traits, function, nature and nurture, and biological kinds, followed by an examination of metaphysical questions, biology's relation with the traditional concerns of philosophy of science, and how evolution has been introduced into the epistemological debates. The final section considers the relevance of biology to questions about ethics, religion, and human nature. Technicalities are made accessible to the non-biologist, while still maintaining philosophical subtleties. The text is thus relevant to individuals at various levels of study.