What does genetic selection miss? Considering the causal role of behavior in evolution

• Ongay de Felipe, Íñigo ^[1]
  1. [1] Fundación Gustavo Bueno (Oviedo-Spain)-American School of Bilbao, España
• Localización: Ludus vitalis: revista de filosofía de las ciencias de la vida = journal of philosophy of life sciences = revue de philosophie des sciences de la vie, ISSN 1133-5165, Vol. 20, Nº. 37, 2012, págs. 127-135
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Dialnet Métricas: 2 Citas
• Resumen

  • While the Darwinian original concept of natural selection primarily includes the central role that the behavior of individual organisms may play as an active agent in the process of biological evolution, the architects of the Modern Synthesis tended to focus primarily on genetic heritance in order to explain evolutionary changes of populations. I shall argue that in doing so there is something important that evolutionary biology fails to grasp: the behavior of the organisms that need to act in their ecological environment if copies of their genes are to be transmitted. The concept of behavior helps to understand the way evolution works in the wild. Finally, examples are provided as to how ethology offers some enlightening insights that help reinterpret, in a way that does not imply a metaphysical hypostatization of the idea of nature, much of the current debate in relation to the very concept of natural selection as real force acting in the outside world.