How Not to Argue for the Indeterminism of Evolution: A Look at Two Recent Attempts to Settle the Issue

Millstein, Roberta (2002) How Not to Argue for the Indeterminism of Evolution: A Look at Two Recent Attempts to Settle the Issue.

Abstract

I examine recent debates in the philosophy of biology over the determinism or indeterminism of the evolutionary process, focusing on two papers in particular: Glymour 2001 and Stamos 2001. I argue that neither of these papers succeeds in making the case for the indeterminism of the evolutionary process, and suggest that what is needed is a detailed analysis of the causal processes at every level from the quantum mechanical to the evolutionary.