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The Supervenience of Biological Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Alexander Rosenberg
Alexander Rosenberg*
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Abstract

In this paper the concept of supervenience is employed to explain the relationship between fitness as employed in the theory of natural selection and population biology and the physical, behavioral and ecological properties of organisms that are the subjects of lower level theories in the life sciences. The aim of this analysis is to account simultaneously for the fact that the theory of natural selection is a synthetic body of empirical claims, and for the fact that it continues to be misconstrued, even by biologists, for a tautological system. The notion of supervenience is then employed to provide a new statement of the relation of Mendelian predicates to molecular ones in order to provide for the commensurability and potential reducibility of Mendelian to molecular genetics in a way that circumvents the theoretical complications which appear to stand in the way of such a reduction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 368 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1978

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Footnotes

†

For useful comments on earlier versions of this paper I owe thanks to David Hull, Michael Ruse and William Wimsatt. None of these persons should, however, be assumed to agree with my claims.

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