Reply to comment

In another course I am taking this semester, we are talking about how the story of evolution contributes to the field of biology.  The particular perspective is how genetics, evolutionary, and developmental biology are integrated into a paradigm of enormous scope.  All of this is history is taking place post Darwin, yet his name is thrown around a lot.  I am struggling with reading papers about limitations of natural selection as a story concurrently with Darwin’s initial description it.  I keep wondering what he might think about it?  Would he agree with the words that Gould and Lewontin put in his mouth in their paper The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme.  They present the argument that no observations are capable of disproving evolution.  According to the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, this property renders the story of evolution as not scientific.  Outside of Popper’s philosophy, it is problematic when the story supplied by evolution is neither interesting nor useful.  Gould and Lewontin provide several examples where the story that adaptation tells about empirical evidence is inferior to the story told by developmental biology.  The authors argue that Darwin would readily accept a broad approach.  They state, “We welcome the richness that a pluralistic approach, so akin to Darwin's spirit, can provide.”

As our prompt for this week’s post was to discuss whether or not Darwin was a foundationalist? Empiricist?  I would like to add the question was he a pluralist?