Suppes Predicate for Genetics and Natural Selection

✍ Scribed by JOÃO CARLOS MARQUES MAGALHÃES; DÉCIO KRAUSE

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 383 KB
• Volume: 209
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2000.2243

✦ Synopsis

Science is easier to practice than to understand. It is easier to be a physicist [or a biologist] and acquire correct knowledge of physics [or of biology] than to explain what exactly one does when doing physics [biology].

[C. F. von WeizsaK cker, Die Einheit der Natur, Hauser, MuK nchen, 1971, p. 110] Patrick Suppes' slogan that &&to axiomatize a theory is to present a set-theoretical predicate'' was used in the synthetic theory of evolution. The system presented here extends the axiomatics of the evolutionary theory presented by M. Williams to encompass aspects of genetics. Some biological implications of the system are discussed, including the relationship between the Darwinian concept of "tness, as applied to organisms, and the concept of "tness as applied to genotypes, as it is normally used in population genetics. This paper should be viewed as an adjunct to the speculations on the logical}mathematical foundations of biological sciences.