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Sameness, novelty, and nominal kinds

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A Commentary to this article was published on 28 August 2015

Abstract

Organisms and their genomes are mosaics of features of different evolutionary age. Older features are maintained by ‘negative’ selection and comprise part of the selective environment that has shaped the evolution of newer features by ‘positive’ selection. Body plans and body parts are among the most conservative elements of the environment in which genetic differences are selected. By this process, well-trodden paths of development constrain and direct paths of evolutionary change. Structuralism and adaptationism are both vindicated. Form plays a selective role in the molding of form.

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Notes

  1. Costs of selective death are reduced if there is postzygotic provisioning of offspring because death can occur before full commitment of effort (Hamilton 1966; Hastings 2000). Some copying errors are detected and corrected by proof-reading mechanisms during DNA replication. These mechanisms are analogous to error-correcting properties of computer code.

  2. The ‘story’ has been retold so many times with embellishments, abbreviations, and subtle rewording that evidence of common ancestry is no longer detectable in the text but confined to structural features of the plot.

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Acknowledgments

The manuscript has benefited from the comments of Peter Godfrey-Smith.

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  1. Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    David Haig

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  1. David Haig
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Correspondence to David Haig.

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Haig, D. Sameness, novelty, and nominal kinds. Biol Philos 30, 857–872 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9456-9

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