Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T12:49:00.359Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The “Genetic Program” Program: A Commentary on Maynard Smith on Information in Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Kim Sterelny
Kim Sterelny*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington Philosophy Program, RSSS, Australian National University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In many texts on evolution the reader will find a characteristic depiction of inheritance and evolution, one showing the generations of an evolving population linked only by a causal flow from genotype to genotype. On this view, the genotype of each organism in this population plays a dual role as both the motor of individual development and as the sole causal channel across the generations (cf., e.g., Maynard Smith 1993, Fig. 8). This picture is known to be literally false. In many species, parents exert direct causal influence on their offspring, and some of those influences cause the offspring to resemble the parent. For example, a butterfly that lays her eggs on the same plant host on which she hatched thereby exerts a causal influence on her offspring, and one apt to cause them to resemble her more than they would, had she chosen a plant of a different species. None of this is at all controversial, but it poses a puzzle. If the “Weissmanian” conception is literally false, why is it seen as a perspicacious representation of evolution?

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 195 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.

‡

Thanks to Russell Gray and Paul Griffiths for comments on a draft of these comments.

References

Dawkins, R. (1982a), The Extended Phenotype. Oxford, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, S. A. (1996), “Host Control of Symbiont Transmission: The Separation of Symbionts into Germ and Soma”, American Naturalist 148: 1113–1124.10.1086/285974CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, P. (1999), “Genes and Codes: Lessons from the Philosophy of Mind?”, in Hardcastle, V. (ed.), Biology Meets Psychology: Constraints, Conjectures, Connections. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 305–322.Google Scholar
Godfrey-Smith, P. (forthcoming), “On The Theoretical Role of Genetic Coding”, Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Gray, R. (1992), “Death of the Gene: Developmental Systems Strike Back”, in Griffiths, P. (ed.), Trees of Life: Essays of the Philosophy of Biology. Dordrecht, Kluwer: 165–209.10.1007/978-94-015-8038-0_7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, R. (forthcoming), “Selfish Genes or Developmental Systems? Evolution Without Replicators and Vehicles”, in Singh, R., Krimbas, K., Paul, D., and Beatty, J. (eds.), Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical and Political Perspectives: Festschrift for Richard Lewontin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Griffiths, P. E. and Gray, R. (1994), “Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation”, Journal of Philosophy XCI(6): 277–304.10.2307/2940982CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1993), The Theory of Evolution [1st ed., 1975]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K. (2000), “Niche Construction, Developmental Systems and the Extended Replicator”, in Gray, R., Griffiths, P. and Oyama, S. (eds.), Cycles of Contingency. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sterelny, K. and Griffiths, P. (1999), Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226178653.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, K., Smith, K., and Dickison, M. (1996), “The Extended Replicator”, Biology and Philosophy 11: 377–403.10.1007/BF00128788CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szathmáry, E. and Smith, J. Maynard (1997), “From Replicators to Reproducers: The First Major Transitions Leading to Life”, Journal of Theoretical Biology 187: 555–571.10.1006/jtbi.1996.0389CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed