Abstract
From its inception Darwinian evolutionary biology has been seen as having a problematic relationship of fact and theory. While the forging of the modern evolutionary synthesis resolved most of these issues for biologists, critics continue to argue that natural selection and common descent are “only theories.” Much of the confusion engendered by the “evolution wars” can be clarified by applying the concept of phenomena, inferred from fact, and explained by theories, thus locating where legitimate dissent may still exist. By setting such analysis in the context of research traditions, it is possible to gain further insight into the complex interplay of facts, phenomena, and theories. Two case studies are explored to assess the value of such approaches, one from within evolutionary biology, the Baldwin effect, and one from outside, intelligent design.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aronova E (2007) Karl Popper and Lamarckism. Biological Theory 2: 37–51.
Baldwin JM (1896) A new factor in evolution. American Naturalist 30: 441–451, 536–553.
Behe MJ (1996) Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press.
Bogen J, Woodward J (1988) Saving the phenomena. Philosophical Review 97: 303–352.
Bowler PJ (1988) The Non-Darwinian Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bree CR (1872) An Exposition of Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr. Darwin. London: Longmans.
Bridgham JT, Carroll SM, Thornton JW (2006) Evolution of hormone-receptor complexity by molecular exploitation. Science 312: 97–101.
Campbell JH (1985) An organizational interpretation of evolution. In: Evolution at a Crossroads (Depew DJ, Weber BH, eds), 133–167. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Carroll SB (2005) Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. New York: Norton.
Carroll SB, Grenier JK, Weatherbee SC (2001) From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Conway Morris S (2000) Evolution: Bringing Molecules into the Fold. Cell 100: 1–11.
Corning P (2005) Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Darwin CR (1851, 1854, 1858) A Monograph of the Sub-Class Cirripedia. London: The Ray Society [1851 and 1854], and A Monograph of the Fossil Lepadida, London: Paleontological Society [1858].
Darwin CR (1859) On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray.
Darwin CR (1862) On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing. London: John Murray.
Darwin CR (1868) The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. London: John Murray.
Deacon TW (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: Norton.
Deacon TW (2003) Multilevel selection in a complex adaptive system: The problem of language origins. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 81–106. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dennett DC (1995) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Dennett DC (2003) The Baldwin effect: A crane, not a skyhook. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 69–79. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Depew DJ (2003) Baldwin and his many effects. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 3–31. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Depew DJ (in press) The evolution of Darwinism and the Baldwin effect. In: Atti el Convergno: Epigenetica: Un nuovo modello per la complessita nella scienze e nella filosofia (Stanzione M, ed). Roma: Università di Roma Press.
Depew DJ, Weber BH (1985) Innovation and tradition in evolutionary theory. In: Evolution at a Crossroads (Depew DH, Weber BH, eds), 227–260. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Depew DJ, Weber BH (1995) Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Doolittle WF (1999) Phylogenetic classification and the universal tree. Science 202: 2124–2148.
Doolittle WF (2000) Uprooting the tree of life. Scientific American 282 (2): 90–95.
Downes SM (2003) Baldwin effects and the expansion of the explanatory repertoire in evolutionary biology. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 33–51. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Eldredge N (1985) Unfinished Synthesis: Biological Hierarchies and Modern Evolutionary Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.
Futuyma DJ (1998) Evolutionary Biology. 3rd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.
Gale BG (1982) Evolution without Evidence: Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Gayon J (1998) Darwinism’s Struggle for Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gehring WJ (1998) Master Control Genes in Development and Evolution. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ghiselin MT (1969) The Triumph of the Darwinian Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gilbert GN, Mulkay M (1984) Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gilbert SF (1997) Developmental Biology. 5th ed. Sunderland MA: Sinauer.
Godfrey-Smith P (2003) Between Baldwin skepticism and Baldwin boosterism. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 53–67. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Goodwin BC (1994) How the Leopard Changed Its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Gould SJ (1983) Evolution as fact and theory. In: Gould SJ, Hen’s Teeth and Horse’s Toes, 253–262. New York: Norton.
Griffiths PE (2003) Beyond the Baldwin effect: James Mark Baldwin’s “social heredity,” epigenetic inheritance, and niche construction, in Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ (eds), 193–215. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Griffiths PE, Gray RD (2001) Darwinism and developmental systems. In: Cycles of Contingency (Oyama S, Griffiths PE, Gray RD, eds), 195–218. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hinton GE, Nowland SJ (1987) How learning can guide evolution. Complex Systems 1: 495–502.
Ho M-W, Saunders PT, eds (1984) Beyond Neo-Darwinism: An Introduction to the New Evolutionary Paradigm. London: Academic Press.
Hofmann JR, Weber BH (2003) The fact of evolution: Implications for science education. Science and Education 12: 729–760.
Huxley JS (1942) Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. London: Allen and Unwin.
Humes E. (2007) Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for the American Soul. New York: Harper Collins.
Jablonka E (2001) The systems of inheritance. In: Cycles of Contingency (Oyama S, Griffiths PE, Gray RD, eds), 99–116. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jablonka E, Lamb MJ (1995) Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson PE (1993) Darwin on Trial. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Johnson PE (2000) The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Kauffman SA (1993) The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman SA (1995) At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman SA (2000) Investigations. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kellogg V (1907) Darwinism Today: A Discussion of Present-Day Scientific Criticism of the Darwinian Selection Theories. New York: Holt.
Kimura M (1968) Evolutionary rate at the molecular level. Nature 217: 624–626.
Kimura M (1983) The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kimura M (1987) Molecular evolutionary clock and the neutral theory. Journal of Molecular Evolution 26: 24–33.
King JL, Jukes TH (1969) Non-Darwinian evolution. Science 164: 788–798.
Lakatos I (1970) Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Lakatos I, Musgrave A, eds), 91–195. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakatos I (1978) The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laudan L (1977) Progress and Its Problems: Toward a Theory of Scientific Growth. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lewin R (1999) Patterns in Evolution: The New Molecular View. New York: Scientific American Press.
Lewontin RC (1983) Gene, organism and environment. In: Evolution From Molecules to Men (Bendall DS, ed), 273–285. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Li W-H (1997) Molecular Evolution. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer.
Li W-H, Gu Z, Wang H, Nekrutenko A (2001) Evolutionary analysis of the human genome. Nature 409: 847–848.
Lloyd Morgan C (1896) Of modification and variation. Science 4: 733–739.
McMenamin MAS (1998) The Garden of Ediacara: Discovering the First Complex Life. New York: Columbia University Press.
Maynard Smith J (1987) Natural selection: When learning guides evolution. Nature 329: 761–762.
Mayr E (1963) Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Michel GF, Moore CL (1995) Developmental Psychobiology: An Interdisciplinary Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Mivart StG (1871) On the Genesis of Species. London: Macmillan.
Moore J (1991) Deconstructing Darwinism: The politics of evolution in the 1860s. Journal of the History of Biology 24: 353–408.
Mulkay M (1985) The Word and the World: Explorations in the Form of Sociological Analysis. London: Allen and Unwin.
Müller F (1869) Facts and Arguments for Darwin Dallas WS, trans). London: John Murray. German orig. 1863.
Nikaido M, Rooney AP, Okada N (1999) Phyogenetic relationships among certariodactyls based upon insertions of short and long interspersed elements: Hippopotamuses are the closest extant relatives of whales. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98: 9707–9712.
Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN, Feldman MW (2003) Niche Construction: A Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Osborn HF (1896) A mode of evolution requiring neither natural selection nor the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Transactions of the New York Academy of Science 15: 141–148.
Oyama S (1985) The Ontogeny of Information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oyama S, Griffiths PE, Gray RD, eds (2001) Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Page RDM, Holmes EC (1998) Molecular Evolution: A Phylogenetic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell.
Paley W (1802) Natural Theology Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature. London: Faulder.
Plotkin H (2004) Evolutionary Thought in Psychology: A Brief History. Oxford: Blackwell.
Prebble J, Weber BH (2003) Wandering in the Gardens of the Mind: Peter Mitchell and the Making of Glynn. New York: Oxford University Press.
Romanes GJ (1893) An Examination of Weismannism. Chicago: Open Court.
Ruse M (1982) Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolutionary Controversies. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Salthe SN (1993) Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sarfati J (2002) Refuting Evolution 2. Green Forest, AR: Master Books.
Shanks N (2004) God, the Devil, and Darwin. New York: Oxford University Press.
Shubin N, Tabin C, Carroll S (1997) Fossils, genes and the evolution of animal limbs. Nature 388: 639–648.
Simpson GG (1953) The Baldwin effect. Evolution 7: 110–117.
Steele EJ, Lindley RA, Blanden RV (1998) Lamarck’s Signature: How Retro-genes are Changing Darwin’s Natural Selection Paradigm. Reading, MA: Perseus Books.
Talbot M (2005) Darwin in the dock: Intelligent design has its day in court. New Yorker (5 December): 66–77.
Valentine JW, Jablonski D, Erwin DH (1999) Fossils, molecules and embryos: New perspectives on the Cambrian explosion. Development 126: 851–859.
Wang DY-C, Kumar S, Blair Hedges S (1999) Divergence time estimates for the early history of animal phyla and the origin of plants, animals and fungi. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 226: 163–171.
Weber BH (2003) Emergence of mind and the Baldwin effect. In: Evolution and Learning (Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds), 309–326. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weber BH, Depew DJ (1996) Natural selection and self-organization: Dynamical models as clues to a new evolutionary synthesis. Biology and Philosophy 11: 33–65.
Weber BH, Depew DJ (2001) Developmental systems, Darwinian evolution and the unity of science. In: Cycles of Contingency (Oyama S, Griffiths PE, Gray RD, eds), 239–253. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weber BH, Depew DJ, eds (2003) Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weber BH, Depew DJ (2004) Darwinism, design, and complex systems dynamics. In: Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA (Dembski WA, Ruse R, eds), 173–190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weinreich DM, Delaney NF, DePristo MA, Hartl DL (2006) Darwinian evolution can follow only very few mutational paths to fitter proteins. Science 312: 111–114.
Weismann F (1891) Essays on Heredity and Kindred Problems (Poulton E et al., eds). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Weismann F (1893) The all-sufficiency of natural selection: A reply to Herbert Spencer. Contemporary Review 64: 309–338. 596–610.
Wells J (2000) Icons of Evolution Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong. Washington DC: Regnery.
West-Eberhard MJ (2003) Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Whewell W (1837) History of the Inductive Sciences. 3 vols. London: Parker.
Wicken JS (1987) Evolution, Information and Thermodynamics: Extending the Darwinian Program. New York: Oxford University Press.
Williams RJP, Fraústo da Silva JJR (2006) The Chemistry of Evolution: The Development of Our Ecosystem. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Wilson AC, Carlson SS, White TJ (1977) Biochemical evolution. Annual Reviews of Biochemistry 46: 573–639.
Woese C (1998) The universal ancestor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95: 6854–6859.
Woese C (2002) On the evolution of cells. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99: 8742–8747.
Zuckerkandl E (1987) On the evolutionary clock. Journal of Molecular Evolution 26: 34–46.
Zuckerkandl E, Pauling L (1965) Molecules as documents of evolutionary history. Journal of Theoretical Biology 8: 357–366.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weber, B.H. Fact, Phenomenon, and Theory in the Darwinian Research Tradition. Biol Theory 2, 168–178 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2007.2.2.168
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/biot.2007.2.2.168