Discussion: Elliott Sober'sThe Nature of Selection

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1986
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 967 KB
• Volume: 1
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0169-3867
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00127091

✦ Synopsis

In the acknowledgment section of his book, The Nature of Selection, Elliott Sober writes:

[W]hile browsing through an issue of Philosophy of Science, I happened upon Bill Wimsatt's review of George C. Williams' book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Wimsatt's enthusiasm suggested that this book might be fun to read. Being well prepared as a philosopher to appreciate the struggle in the sciences between holism and reductionism, I was delighted to find in Williams' work a set of biological problems in which those philosophical questions were live issues of scientific moment. Wimsatt and David Hull encouraged my curiosity, and I am grateful to them for welcoming a newcomer into philosophy of biology. I also am grateful to George Williams for writing a book of such philosophical depth.