The Flower of Evolution
Seminário
Filosofia e História das Ciências
The Flower of Evolution. A historico-philosophical analysis of the paradigms that characterize current evolution research.
Sessão em inglês
Resumo: Evolution is a phenomenon traditionally studied from within the biological sciences. The latter have evolved numerous disciplines and research areas that can be grouped into seven main schools. Several of these schools can be clustered further into megastructures called paradigms. I depict these schools as a flower. Each petal represents a distinct research school. Darwinism marks the onset of modern evolutionary thinking and it lies at the foundation of the Modern Synthesis. Darwinism and the teachings of the Modern Synthesis together are referred to as the Neo-Darwinian paradigm. Micro-, Meso-, and Macroevolutionary schools are expansions of the Neo-Darwinian paradigm, and together with the school of Ecology, they constitute the paradigm called Ecological Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Eco-Evo-Devo). The Reticulate Evolution School evolves somewhat independently of these Darwinian-based research schools.
Each school has contributed valuable insights into how evolution occurs. But there does not currently exist an all-encompassing research framework or evolutionary paradigm. This is due, on the one hand, to the division of the evolutionary sciences, and on the other, to the pluralistic nature of evolution. Current focus therefore lies, not on how distinct sciences and schools can be unified, but on how we can account for this evolutionary pluralism. Of major importance in this is how we define units, levels, mechanisms, and evolutionary hierarchies, and how these can account for evolutionary causation. I contribute to such research by developing an approach I call applied evolutionary epistemology.