Introduction
Philosophy of biology is a vibrant and growing field. From initial roots in the metaphysics of species (Ghiselin 1966, 1974, Hull 1976), questions about whether biology has laws of nature akin to those of physics (Ruse 1970, Hull 1977), and discussions of teleology and function (Grene 1974, Cummins 1977, Brandon 1981), the field has developed since the 1970s to include a vast range of topics.
Over the last few decades, philosophy has had an important impact on biology, partly through following the model of engagement with science that was set by first-wave philosophers of biology like Morton Beckner, David Hull, Marjorie Grene, William Wimsatt and others. Today some parts of philosophy of biology are indistinguishable from theoretical biology. This is due in part to the impetus provided by second-wave philosophers of biology like John Beatty, William Bechtel,Robert Brandon, James Griesemer, Elisabeth Lloyd, and Elliott Sober. Indeed, philosophers have been instrumental in establishing theoretical biology as a field by collaborating with scientists, publishing in science journals, and taking up conceptual questions at the heart of the biological enterprise.
Third-wave philosophers of biology now have a wide array of biological and philosophical topics open to them. Three of these are surveyed here in an effort to show what kinds of questions philosophers of biology are asking, and how these questions are being addressed. While these topics show something of the range of current issues in the field, we have not attempted to provide a survey of philosophy of biology. Lest these selections seem unnatural, we point out that we chose depth over breadth because the method is part of the message. The best contemporary philosophy of biology is characterized by close study of biological details and by asking and answering questions that make contact with the efforts of working scientists.
Before moving on to sketches of recent thinking about systematics, ecology, and natural selection, it will be helpful to provide a bit of the philosophically relevant background on contemporary approaches to the biological sciences, particularly because philosophy of biology and philosophy of science have diverged in important ways over the past couple of decades. One reason for this divergence is that while most philosophers of science have at least some background understanding of the subject matter of physics, very few non-specialists have a similar understanding of the biological world and its study.
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