John Dewey was the first philosopher to recognize that Darwin's thesis about natural selection not only required us to change how we think about ourselves and the life forms around us, but also required a markedly different approach to philosophy. Evolution's First Philosopher shows how Dewey's arguments arose from his recognition of the continuity of natural selection and mindedness, from which he developed his concept of growth. Growth, for Dewey, has no end beyond itself and forms the basis of a naturalized theory of ethics. While other philosophers gave some attention to evolutionary theory, it was Dewey alone who saw that Darwinism provides the basis for a naturalized theory of meaning. This, in turn, portends a new account of knowledge, ethics, and democracy. To clarify evolution's conception of natural selection, Jerome A. Popp looks at brain science and examines the relationship between the genome and experience in terms of the contemporary concepts of preparedness and plasticity. This research shows how comprehensive and penetrating Dewey's thought was in terms of further consequences for the philosophical method entailed by Darwin's thesis. Dewey's foresight is further legitimated when Popp places his work within the context of the current thought of Daniel Dennett.

Provides a unique discussion of human evolution from a philosophical viewpoint, covering such issues as religion, race and gender.

First published in French in 1907, Henri Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice is a scintillating and radical work by one of the great French philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This outstanding new translation, the first for over a hundred years, brings one of Bergson’s most important and ambitious works to a new generation of readers. A sympathetic though critical reader of Darwin, Bergson argues in Creative Evolution against a mechanistic, reductionist view of evolution. For Bergson, all life emerges from a creative, shared impulse, which he famously terms élan vital and which passes like a current through different organisms and generations over time. Whilst this impulse remains as forms of life diverge and multiply, human life is characterized by a distinctive form of consciousness or intellect. Yet as Bergson brilliantly shows, the intellect’s fragmentary and action- oriented nature, which he likens to the cinematograph, means it alone cannot grasp nature’s creativity and invention over time. A major task of Creative Evolution is to reconcile these two elements. For Bergson, the answer famously lies in intuition, which brings instinct and intellect together and takes us “into the very interior of life.” A work of great rigour and imaginative richness that contributed to Bergson winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, Creative Evolution played an important and controversial role in the trajectory of twentieth-century philosophy and continues to create significant discussion and debate. The philosopher and psychologist William James, who admired Bergson’s work, was writing an introduction to the first English translation of the book before his death in 1910. This new translation includes a foreword by Elizabeth Grosz and a helpful translator’s introduction by Donald Landes. Also translated for the first time are additional notes, articles, reviews and letters on the reception of Creative Evolution in biology, mathematics, and theology. This edition includes fascinating commentaries by philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Canguilhem, and Gilles Deleuze.

“An important contribution . . . invaluable to anyone interested in the history of pragmatism and the influence of biology and evolution on pragmatic thinkers.” —Richard J. Bernstein, The New School for Social Research, author of The Pragmatic Turn In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers? Although the various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology. “Pragmatism’s Evolution is about the role of evolution, as a theory, in American pragmatism, as well as the early evolution of pragmatism itself.” —Isis “Superb.” —Metascience “[An] important book.” —Acta Biotheoretica “A significant and edifying work.” —Choice “Pearce has done something remarkable and all too rare: written a book at the intersection of philosophy, science, and history that is equally excellent in all three respects.” —International Journal of Philosophical Studies

Originally published in 2001, this is the second of two volumes published by Cambridge University Press in honour of Richard Lewontin. This second volume of essays honours the philosophical, historical and political dimensions of his work. It is fitting that the volume covers such a wide range of perspectives on modern biology, given the range of Lewontin's own contributions. He is not just a very successful practitioner of evolutionary genetics, but a rigorous critic of the practices of genetics and evolutionary biology and an articulate analyst of the social, political and economic contexts and consequences of genetic and evolutionary research. The volume begins with an essay by Lewontin on Natural History and Formalism in Evolutionary Genetics, and includes contributions by former students, post-docs, colleagues and collaborators, which cover issues ranging from the history and conceptual foundations of evolutionary biology and genetics, to the implications of human genetic diversity.

Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in October 1981. Includes bibliographical references and index.

From mitochondria to meerkats, the natural world is full of spectacular examples of social behaviour. In the early 1960s Bill Hamilton changed the way we think about how such behaviour evolves. He introduced three key innovations - now known as Hamilton's rule, kin selection, and inclusive fitness - which have been enormously influential, but which remain the subject of fierce controversy. Hamilton's pioneering work kick-started a research program now known as social evolution theory. This is a book about the philosophical foundations and future prospects of that program. Part I, "Foundations", is a careful exposition and defence of Hamilton's ideas, with a few modifications along the way. In Part II, "Extensions", Jonathan Birch shows how these ideas can be applied to phenomena including cooperation in micro-organisms, cooperation among the cells of a multicellular organism, and culturally evolved cooperation in the earliest human societies. Birch argues that real progress can be made in understanding microbial evolution, evolutionary transitions, and human evolution by viewing them through the lens of social evolution theory, provided the theory is interpreted with care and adapted where necessary. The Philosophy of Social Evolution places social evolution theory on a firm philosophical footing and sets out exciting new directions for further work.

This illuminating volume explores the effects of chance on evolution, covering diverse perspectives from scientists, philosophers, and historians. The evolution of species, from single-celled organisms to multicellular animals and plants, is the result of a long and highly chancy history. But how profoundly has chance shaped life on earth? And what, precisely, do we mean by chance? Bringing together biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of science, Chance in Evolution is the first book to untangle the far-reaching effects of chance, contingency, and randomness on the evolution of life. The book begins by placing chance in historical context, starting with the ancients and moving through Darwin to contemporary biology. It documents the shifts in our understanding of chance as Darwin’s theory of evolution developed into the modern synthesis, and how the acceptance of chance in Darwinian theory affected theological resistance to it. Other chapters discuss how chance relates to the concepts of genetic drift, mutation, and parallel evolution—as well as recent work in paleobiology and the experimental evolution of microbes. By engaging in collaboration across biology, history, philosophy, and theology, this book offers a comprehensive overview both of the history of chance in evolution and of our current understanding of the impact of chance on life.

The philosophically most challenging science today, arguably, is no longer physics but biology. It is hardly an exaggeration to state that Charles Darwin has shaped modern evolutionary biology more significantly than anyone else. Moreover, since Darwin's day, philosophers and scientists have realized the enormous philosophical potential of Darwinism and have tried to expand his insights well beyond the limits of biology. However, no consensus has been achieved. The aim of this collection of essays is to revive a comprehensive discussion of the meaning and the philosophical implications of "Darwinism." The contributors to Darwinism and Philosophy are international scholars from the fields of philosophy, science, and history of ideas. A strength of this collection is that it brings together sustained reflection from American and Continental philosophical traditions. The conclusions of the contributors vary, but taken together their essays successfully map the problems of interpreting "Darwinism."