Abstract
The debate over ‘adaptationism’ concerns the extent to which the morphology and behaviour of animals can be understood as adaptations to the environment. Some traits are pretty clearly adaptations, and others are pretty clearly not. The question is one of proportion. This paper makes a number of related points about adaptive or functional explanation in evolutionary biology. Overall, I try to show that adaptive and functional explanations have been unfairly caricatured in recent attacks on ‘adaptationism’. I hope that by clarifying the nature of adaptive explanation I can make clear some of the empirical issues that need to be settled before ‘adaptationism’ can be sensibly evaluated.
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Notes
Gould, S.J. & Vrba, E.S. (1982) ‘Exaptation — A Missing Term in the Science of Form’, Paleobiology, 8 p4 – 15.
I am thinking, of course, of the dispute between V.C Wynne-Edwards (Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour, Oliver & Boyd. Edinburgh. 1962) and G.C Williams (Adaptation & Natural Selection. Princeton University Press. 1966), who understood very well that if the group’s need for population control has no influence on the evolution of a behaviour then an effect of that behaviour on population control is just that, an effect, not a function.
As discussed by Robert Cummin in ‘Functional Analysis’, Journal of Philosophy LXXII, 1975 p741 – 765 and The Nature of Psychological Explanation., Bradford/MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1983.
Wright, L. (1973) ‘Functions’, Philosophical Review. 82, p139 – 168
Millikan, R. (1984) Language, Thought & Other Biological Categories., Bradford/MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. ; Neander, K. (forthcoming) ‘Functions as Selected Effects’, Philosophy of Science.; Griffiths, P.E. (forthcoming) ‘Functional Analysis & Proper Functions’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 5 Millikan, Op cit.
Griffiths, Op.cit.
Darden, L and Cain, J. (1989) ‘Selection Type Theories’, Philosophy of Science. 56, p106 – 129
Op.cit.
Op.cit. p 6.
Darwin, C. (1872)The Expression of Emotions in Man & Animals.
Boorse, C (1976) ‘Wright on Functions’, Philosophical Review LXXXVI, p70 – 86.
Op.cit.
O’Hara, RJ. (1988) ‘Homage to Clio, or, Towards an Historical Philosophy for Evolutionary Biology’, Systematic Zoology, 37, p142 – 155.
This seems to require that polymorphic traits be admitted when constructing cladograms. Some systematists are hostile to this, as it can be complicated. There seems, however, to be no substantial argument against the practice, and, indeed, it is hard to see how it can be avoided. At the very least, occasional mutations in the population must be admitted, and given the frequency of polymorphisms higher frequencies have to be admitted if many characters are not to be excluded from consideration.
It might also be thought that a trait which has lost its function might persist because it is genetically linked to some vital trait. This is not possible, however, because unless the trait had become more prevalent than it would be on the basis the genetic linkage alone, such a trait, however useful, will not acquire proper function. If it has become more prevalent, then when it ceases to be selected for its function, its prevalence will decline.
Op. cit.
Op. cit.
I am grateful to Karen Neander for pointing out the necessity of this last clause. It excludes counterexamples parrallel to those which led me to include a probablistic element in my definition of a vestige. A trait might be thought to be currently contributing to fitness although it is not being selected because of an improbable absence of mutations.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Griffiths, P. (1992). Adaptive Explanation and the Concept of a Vestige. In: Griffiths, P. (eds) Trees of Life. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8038-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8038-0_5
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