Resources

These resources are a work in progress and will shortly be developed into a filterable list. 

Adaptation and Adaptationism

Axelrod, R. (1984). The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.

Catania, K. (2020). Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dawkins, R. (1982). The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lloyd, E. (2001). “Units and levels of selection: an anatomy of the units of selection debates.” In Thinking About Evolution (Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspectives, vol. 2). Edited by R.S. Singh, C.B. Krimbas, D.B. Paul, and J. Beatty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2001). “Three kinds of adaptationism.” In Adaptationism and Optimality. Edited by S.H. Orzack and E. Sober. New York: Cambridge University Press, 335–357.

Godfrey-Smith, P. (2009). Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gould, S.J. and R.C. Lewontin. (1979). “The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Part B: Biological Sciences 205:581–598

Gould, S.J. and E. Vrba. (1982). “Exaptation--A Missing Term in the Science of Form.” Paleobiology 8(1):4–15.

Lynch, M. (2007). “The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United State of America 104 (Suppl 1):8597–8604.

Maynard Smith, J. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Nowak, M. (2006). Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

O’Connor, C. (2019). The Origins of Unfairness: Social Categories and Cultural Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Orzack, S.H. (2008). “Testing adaptive hypotheses, optimality models, and adaptationism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology. Edited by M. Ruse. New York: Oxford University Press, 87–112.

Orzack, S.H. and E. Sober. (ed) (2001). Adaptationism and Optimality. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pittendrigh, C.S. (1958). "Adaptation, natural selection, and behavior.” In Behavior and Evolution. Edited by A. Roe and G.G. Simpson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 390–416.

Potochnik, A. (2008). "Optimality modeling in a suboptimal world." Biology & Philosophy 24(2): 183–197.

Rose, M.R. and Lauder, G.V. (1996). Adaptation. London: Academic Press.

Simpson, G.G. (1958). “The study of evolution.” In Behavior and Evolution. Edited by A. Roe and G.G. Simpson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 7–26.

Turner, J.S. (2007). The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Walsh, D. (2015). Organisms, Agency and Evolution. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Williams, G.C. (1966). Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Agency and Organization

Barandiaran, X., E. Di Paolo, and M. Rohde. (2009). “Defining agency. Individuality, normativity, asymmetry and spatio-temporality in action.” Adaptive Behavior 17(5):367–386.

Callebaut, W. G.B. Mueller, and S.A. Newman. (2007). “The organismic systems approach. Streamlining the naturalistic agenda.” In Integrating Evolution and Development: From Theory to Practice. Edited by R. Sansom and R.N. Brandon. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press, 25–92.

Camazine, S., J.-L. Deneubourg, N. R. Franks, J. Sneyd, G. Theraulaz and E. Bonabeau. (2001). Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Depew, D.J. and B.H. Weber. (1995). Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

Frankfurt, H.G. (1978). “The problem of action.” American Philosophical Quarterly 15(2):157–162.

Lyon, P. (2006). “The biogenic approach to cognition.” Cognitive Processes 7:11–29.

Mossio, M. and A. Moreno. (2015). Biological Autonomy. Springer Dordrecht.

Okasha, S. (2018). Agents and Goals in Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rosslenbroich, B. (2009). “Outline of a concept for an organismic systems biology.” Seminars in Cancer Biology 21(3):156–164.

Ancient and Early Modern Natural Philosophy

Berryman, S. (2009). The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Breitenbach, A. (2006). “Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37(4): 694–711.

Breitenbach, A. (2014). “Biological purposiveness and analogical reflection.” In Kant’s Theory of Biology. Edited by I. Goy and E. Watkins. De Gruyter, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110225792.131.

Des Chene, D. (2001). Spirits and Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes. New York: Cornell University.

Gibson, S. (2015). Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kant, I. (1952) [1790]. Critique of Judgement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Johnson, M.R. (2005). Aristotle on Teleology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goy, I. (2014). “Epigenetic theories: Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Immanuel Kant.” In Kant’s Theory of Biology. Edited by I. Goy and E. Watkins. Berlin: De Gruyter, 43–60.

Lennox, J.G. (2001a). Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals I–IV. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lennox, J.G. (2001b). Aristotle's Philosophy of Biology: Studies in the Origin of Life Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lennox, J.G. (2019). “Aristotle’s biology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 Edition), Edited by E.N. Zalta: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/aristotle-biology/. 

Leunissen, M. (2010). Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

McLaughlin, P. (1990). Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.

Richards, R.J. (2000). "Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: a historical misunderstanding." Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31:11-32.

Rocca, J. (ed.) (2017). Teleology in the Ancient World: Philosophical and Medical Approaches. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Schiefsky, M.J. (2007). Galen's teleology and functional explanation. In Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Volume 33, ed. D. Sedley, 369–400. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, J.E.H., ed. (2006). The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, J.E.H. (2011). Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Causation in Development and Evolution

Chiu, L. (2019). “Decoupling, co-mingling and the evolutionary significance of experiential niche construction.” In Evolutionary Causation: Biological and Philosophical Reflections. Edited by T. Uller and K. Laland. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11693.003.0015.

DiFrisco, J. and J. Jaeger. (2019). “Beyond networks: mechanism and process in evo-devo.” Biology and Philosophy 34:54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9716-9.

DiFrisco, J. and J. Jaeger. (2020). Genetic causation in complex regulatory systems: an integrative dynamical perspective.” Bioessays 42:6. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201900226.

DiFrisco, J., A.C. Love, and G.P. Wagner. (2020). “Character-identity mechanisms: A conceptual model for comparative-mechanistic biology.” Biology & Philosophy 35:44. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-020-09762-2.

Erickson, J.R. and K. Echeverri (2018). "Learning from regeneration research organisms: The circuitous road to scar free wound healing." Developmental Biology 433(2):144–154.

Gilbert, S.F. and D. Epel (2009). Ecological Developmental Biology: Integrating Epigenetics, Medicine, and Evolution. Sunderland: Sinauer.

Hull, D.L. (1980). “Individuality and selection.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 11: 311–332.

Laland, K. (2018). Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony: How Culture Made the Human Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Laland, K.N., J. Odling-Smee, and S.F. Gilbert. (2008). “EvoDevo and Niche Construction: Building Bridges.” Journal of Experimental Zoology 310B:549–566.

Laland K.N., T. Uller T, M.W. Feldman, K. Sterelny K, G.B. Müller, A. Moczek A, E. Jablonka, and J. Odling-Smee. (2015). “The extended evolutionary synthesis: its structure, assumptions and predictions.” Proceedings of the Royal Society, Part B 282. 20151019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.1019.

Mayr, E. (1961). “Cause and effect in biology.” Science 134:1501–1506.

Newman, S.A. (2012). "Physico-genetic determinants in the evolution of development." Science 338:217–219.

Newman, S.A. (2016). "’Biogeneric’ developmental processes: drivers of major transitions in animal evolution." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371(1701). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0443.

Scott-Phillips, T.C., K.N. Laland, D.M. Shuker, T.E. Dickins and S.A. West. (2014). "The niche construction perspective: a critical appraisal." Evolution 68(5):1231–1243.

Sultan, S.E. (2015). Organism and Environment: Ecological Development, Niche Construction, and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Uller, T. and H. Helanterä. (2019). “Niche construction and conceptual change in evolutionary biology. The British Journal for Philosophy of Science 70:351–375.

Directionality

Alroy, J., M. Aberhan, D.J. Bottjer, M. Foote, F.T. Fürsich, P.J. Harries, A.J.W. Hendy, S.M. Holland, L.C. Ivany, W. Kiessling, M.A. Kosnik, C.R. Marshall, A.J. McGowan, A.I. Miller, T.D. Olszewski, M.E. Patzkowsky, S.E. Peters, L. Villier, P.J. Wagner, N. Bonuso, P.S. Borkow, B. Brenneis, M.E. Clapham, L.M. Fall, C.A. Ferguson, V.L. Hanson, A.Z. Krug, K.M. Layou, E.H. Leckey, S. Nürnberg, C.M. Powers, J.A. Sessa, C. Simpson, A. Tomašových, C.C. Visaggi. (2008). “Phanerozoic trends in the global diversity of marine invertebrates.” Science 321:97–100.

Berry, W.B.N. (1987). Growth of a Prehistorical Time Scale: Based on Organic Evolution. New York: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

Bokulich, A. (2018). “Using models to correct data: palaeodiversity and the fossil record.” Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1820-x.

Bowler, P.J. (1976). Fossils and Progress: Paleontology and the Idea of Progressive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century. Science History Publications.

Dresow, M. (Forthcoming). “Measuring time with fossils: a start-up problem in scientific practice.” Philosophy of Science.

Gould, S.J. (1987). Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Hunt, G. (2007). “The Relative Importance of Directional Change, Random Walks, and Stasis in the Evolution of Fossil Lineages.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States of America 104(47):18404–18408.

Hunt, G., M.J. Hopkins and S. Lidgard (2015). "Simple versus complex models of trait evolution and stasis as a response to environmental change." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, United States of America 112: 4885–4890.

Hunt, G. and D.L. Rabosky (2014). "Phenotypic Evolution in Fossil Species: Pattern and Process." Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 42(1):421–441.

Lowe, C. B., M. Kellis, A. Siepel, B.J. Raney, M. Clamp, S.R. Salama, D.M. Kingsley, K. Lindblad-Toh, and D. Haussler, (2011). “Three periods of regulatory innovation during vertebrate evolution.” Science 333:1019–1024.

McShea, D.W. and R.N. Brandon. (2010). Biology’s First Law: The Tendency for Diversity and Complexity to Increase in Biological Systems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Provine, W. (1989). “Progress in evolution and meaning in life.” In Evolutionary Progress. Edited by M.H. Nitecki. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 49–74.

Rudwick, M.J.S. (1972). The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Paleontology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rudwick, M.J.S. (2005). Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rudwick, M.J.S. (2008). Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sepkoski, D. (2012). Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sepkoski Jr., J.J., Bambach, R.K., Raup, D.M. and Valentine, J.W. (1981). “Phanerozoic marine diversity and the fossil record.” Nature 291:435–437.

Simpson, G.G. (1944). Tempo and Mode in Evolution. New York: Columbia University Press.

Vole, K.L., H.H. Øistein, L.H. Liow, and N.C. Stenseth (2015). “The role of biotic forces in driving macroevolution: beyond the Red Queen.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Part B: Biological Sciences 282:20150186. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.0186.

Function and Teleology

Allen, C., M. Bekoff and G. Lauder, eds. (1998). Nature's Purposes: Analyses Of Function and Design in Biology. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Allen, C. and J. Neal (2020). “Teleological notions in biology.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Version). Edited by E.N. Zalta: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/.

Braithwaite, R.D. (1954). Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Craver, C.F. (2013). “Functions and mechanisms: a perspectivalist view.” In Functions: selection and mechanisms. Edited by P. Huneman. Spring Dordrecht, 133–158.

Garson, J. (2016). A Critical Overview of Biological Functions. Switzerland: Springer.

Godfrey-Smith, P. (1993). “Functions: consensus without unity.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 74:196–208.

Hempel, C.G. (1965). “The Logic of Functional Analysis.” In Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press, 297–330.

Kaiser, M. (2018). “ENCODE and the parts of the human genome.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 72:28–37.

Lennox, J.G. (1992) “Teleology.” In Keywords in Evolutionary Biology. Edited by E.F. Keller and E.A. Lloyd. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 324–333.

Love, A.C. (2007). “Functional homology and homology of function: biological concepts and philosophical consequences.” Biology and Philosophy 22:691–708.

Mayr, E. (1974). "Teleological and teleonomic: a new analysis.” Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 14:133–159.

McLaughlin, P. (2001). What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

McShea, D.W. (2012). “Upper-directed systems: a new approach to teleology in biology.” Biology and Philosophy 27:663–688.

McShea, D.W. (2016). “Freedom and purpose in biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 58:64–72.

Millikan, R.G. (1984), Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Nagel, E. (1961). The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.

Nagel, E. (1977). "Teleology revisited: goal-directed processes in biology." Journal of Philosophy 74(5):261–301.

Reiss, J.O. (2009). Not by Design: Retiring Darwin's Watchmaker. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Ruse, M. (1989). “Teleology in biology: is it a cause for concern?” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 4(2):51–54.

Ruse, M. (2003). Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.

Ruse, M. (2018). On Purpose. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Schlosser, G. (1998). “Self-re-production and functionality: a systems-theoretical approach to teleological explanation.” Synthese 116:303–354.

Trestman, M.A. (2012). Implicit and explicit goal-directedness. Erkenntnis 77:207–236.

Walsh, D. (2008). “Teleology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology. Edited by M. Ruse. New York: Oxford University Press, 113–137.

Wouters, A. (2004). “The function debate in philosophy.” Acta Biotheoretica 53:123–151.

Wouters, A. (2007). “Design explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive.” Erkenntnis 67:65–80.

Wright, L. (1973). “Functions.” The Philosophical Review 82(2):139–168.

Zammito, J. (2006). “Teleology then and now: The question of Kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37(4):748–770.

Zammito, J. (2018). The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mechanism, Vitalism, Organicism

Allen, G.E. (2005). “Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth and early twentieth century biology: the importance of historical context.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36(2):261–283.

Amundson, R. and G.V. Lauder (1994). "Function without purpose: the uses of causal role function in evolutionary biology." Biology and Philosophy 9(4): 443–470.

Beckner, M. (1968). The Biological Way of Thought. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press.

Bertalanffy, L. (1952). Problems of Life: An Evaluation of Modern Biological Thought. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Bowler, P.J. (2001). Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early Twentieth Century Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Churchill, F.B. (1969). “From machine-theory to entelechy: two studies in developmental teleology.” Journal of the History of Biology 2:165–185.

Dresow, M. (2020). “Re-forming morphology: two attempts to rehabilitate the problem of form in the first half of the twentieth century.” Journal of the History of Biology 53: 231–248.

Drack, M. (2009). “Ludwig Bertalanffy’s early system approach.” Systems Research and Behavioral Science: https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.992.

Driesch, H. (1908). The Science and Philosophy of Organism, Volume 1. London: Adam and Charles Black.

Esposito, M. (2014). Romantic Biology, 1890–945. New York: Routledge.

Ghiselin, M.T. (1994). “Darwin’s language may seem teleological, but his thinking was another matter.” Biology and Philosophy 9:489–493.

Lenoir, T. (1982). The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lewens, T. (2004). Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Loeb, J. (1912). The Mechanistic Conception of Life: Biological Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lovejoy, A. (1911). “The meaning of vitalism.” Science 33:610–614.

Mensch, J. (2013). Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Newman, L. (1991). “Unmasking Descartes’s case for the bête machine doctrine.” Canadian Journal for Philosophy 31:389–425.

Nicholson, D. (2019). “Is the cell really a machine?” Journal of Theoretical Biology 477:108–126.

Nicholson, D. and R. Gawne. (2015). “Neither logical empiricism nor vitalism but organicism: what the philosophy of biology was.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37:345–381.

Normandin, S. and C.T. Wolfe. (2013). Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010. Springer Dordrecht.

Peterson, E. (2016). The Life Organic: The Theoretical BIology Club and the Roots of Epigenesis. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Russell, E.S. (1945). The Directiveness of Organic Activities. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Woodger, J.H. (1929). Biological Principles. London: K. Paul, Trench and Trubner.