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The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?

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Abstract

The discussion of the adaptive landscape in the philosophical literature appears to be divided along the following lines. On the one hand, some claim that the adaptive landscape is either “uninterpretable” or incoherent. On the other hand, some argue that the adaptive landscape has been an important heuristic, or tool in the service of explaining, as well as proposing and testing hypotheses about evolutionary change. This paper attempts to reconcile these two views.

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Notes

  1. However, this is not exactly correct. Wright makes assumptions such that when you collapse many dimensions into a few, you get a continuous surface. This assumption was false, but that is a different matter from Provine’s objection.

  2. Or, according to a reviewer: “when you collapse lots of dimensions into a few, you'd get a nearly continuous surface.” Thanks for these comments.

  3. Thanks to Mark Kirkpatrick for bringing this to my attention.

  4. Thanks to a reviewer for these comments.

  5. Thanks again to Mark Kirkpatrick for pointing this out.

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  1. University of Utah, 260 S. Central Campus Dr. Rm. 341, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Anya Plutynski

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  1. Anya Plutynski
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Correspondence to Anya Plutynski.

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Plutynski, A. The rise and fall of the adaptive landscape?. Biol Philos 23, 605–623 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-008-9128-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-008-9128-8

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