Toward a Unified Foundation for Evolutionary Biology

Evolutionary theory is remarkably disunified. Core concepts like fitness, selection, and drift are understood in fundamentally different ways by both biologists and philosophers of science. In my project, I aim to develop a unified account of the foundations of evolutionary biology—an account whose concepts and their associated equations are either equivalent to or derivable from the foundational concepts. Using this account, I will show how these concepts are related and trace out the implications of this framework for related concepts and debates (such as biological altruism).

Keywords:evolutionary biology

Disciplines:Other philosophy, ethics and religious studies not elsewhere classified, Theory and methodology of philosophy, Philosophy, Ethics