Pocketable philosophy of biology
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Pocketable philosophy of biology Samir Okasha: Philosophy of biology: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019, xix + 130 pp, £8.00 PB Joeri Witteveen1 · Sara Green1 Published online: 13 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Samir Okasha’s textbook on philosophy of biology in Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series is a welcome addition to existing introductory textbooks. It fills a gap on the most introductory and accessible end of the spectrum. In just under 120 small pages, Okasha initiates the reader to the very idea of philosophy of biology and provides an overview of some of the main topics in the field. Chapter 1, ‘Why philosophy of biology’, starts by motivating the need for philosophical reflection on science before tracing the roots of philosophy of biology as a distinct area of inquiry within general philosophy of science. As Okasha sees it, three coinciding developments explain its emergence: the perceived need by philosophers of science to make their research less focused on physics, the growing awareness of interesting conceptual issues within biology (in part due to concurrent scientific developments, such as the rise of molecular biology), and the naturalistic turn in philosophy of science more generally. In his discussion of the last of these two, Okasha mentions the relevance of the work of scientists (Monod, Mayr, MaynardSmith) and naturalistic philosophers (Quine, Millikan) in raising the profile of philosophical questions about biology. Interestingly, the first development remains without a face. Having noted that philosophers of science from Carnap to Kuhn by and large neglected biology, Okasha remarks that this resulted in ‘a perceived need to redress this imbalance’ (24). It would have been fitting to mention some of the firstgeneration self-identified philosophers of biology here, such as Grene, Hull, Ruse, Schaffner, and Wimsatt. Following this introductory chapter, the discussion turns to five topics that have featured prominently in the philosophy of biology. Chapter 2 provides a historical and philosophical introduction to the nature and explanatory logic of natural * Joeri Witteveen [email protected] Sara Green [email protected] 1
Section for History and Philosophy of Science, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
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Metascience (2020) 29:413–416
selection. It concludes with a short section ‘Why believe in evolution?’ that one will not find in most other textbooks, but that befits an entry-level book like this. Moreover, Okasha’s answer to this question is cogent and relevant. He starts by pointing to the need to distinguish between the evidence for the idea of evolution as such, for natural selection, and for common descent. He then shows that the latter thesis, which is the primary target of opponents of evolutionary theory, is amply confirmed by evidence from anatomy, embryology and, perhaps most powerfully, by the universality of the genetic code. He concludes that anyone who takes
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