TY - JOUR

T1 - The proper role of history in evolutionary explanations

AU - Reydon, Thomas A. C.

N1 - Funding information: I am indebted to two anonymous reviewers for this journal, and to audiences at the Center for Interdisciplinarity (C4I, Michigan State University) and the (Mu?la S?tk? Koçman University), for discussion and insightful comments. Research for this paper was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the French National Research Agency (ANR) with funding for the project (GenDar) (DFG grant no. RE 2613/7?1). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. 4 International Symposium on Philosophy, Education, Art and History of Science th The Explanatory Scope of Generalized Darwinism: Towards Criteria for Evolutionary Explanations Outside Biology

PY - 2023/3/19

Y1 - 2023/3/19

N2 - Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it provides how-possibly explanations sensu Dray. I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative-composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop.

AB - Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it provides how-possibly explanations sensu Dray. I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative-composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116796326&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/nous.12402

DO - 10.1111/nous.12402

M3 - Article

VL - 57

SP - 162

EP - 187

JO - Noûs

JF - Noûs

IS - 1

ER -