Centennial Year Number pp 15-26 | Cite as
On Evolution
Abstract
On the hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s The Origin of Species, we are reminded once again of the perennial power and intellectual appeal of concepts of evolution. And although Darwin’s view was not the first, his concept of the evolution of biological organisms quickened the interest of other scientists and philosophers in making evolutionary theories to account for long-range natural processes of various kinds not restricted to biology. In fact, both in Darwin’s theories and in a number of theories in other fields, an implicit general concept of evolution may be detected. The aim of this paper is to explicate1 this general concept of evolution. Before doing so, however, we shall begin by characterizing it informally.
Keywords
Sweet Orange Proper Part Natural Classis Natural Individual Divergent DevelopmentPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
- 1.For an excellent account of the nature of explication, see Rudolf Carnap, Logical Foundations of Probability I, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), Chapter 1.Google Scholar
- 1.The part-whole theory presented in this section is adapted in many places from portions of calculi presented by J. H. Woodger, Alfred Tarski, and Nelson Goodman. See: J. H. Woodger, The Axiomatic Method in Biology, (Cambridge, England: The Cambridge University Press, 1937) and Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951). Woodger’s book contains an appendix by Tarski, presenting a part-whole calculus.Google Scholar
- The part-whole theory presented in this section is adapted in many places from portions of calculi presented by J. H. Woodger, Alfred Tarski, and Nelson Goodman. See: J. H. Woodger, The Axiomatic Method in Biology, (Cambridge, England: The Cambridge University Press, 1937) and Nelson Goodman, The Structure of Appearance, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1951). Woodger’s book contains an appendix by Tarski, presenting a part-whole calculus.Google Scholar
- 1.This particular notation was introduced by Carnap as an alternative to that given in Principia Mathematica by Whitehead and Russell. In their symbolism, the same relation would be rendered by Develops po (f, g). See Rudolf Carnap, Introduction to Symbolic Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), p. 147.Google Scholar