UID:
almahu_9949983412702882
Format:
1 online resource (192 pages)
ISBN:
9780323912921
,
0323912923
Content:
The Rise of Chance in Evolutionary Theory: A Pompous Parade of Arithmetic explores a pivotal conceptual moment in the history of evolutionary theory: the development of its extensive reliance on a wide array of concepts of chance. It tells the history of a methodological and conceptual development that reshaped our approach to natural selection over a century, ranging from Darwin's earliest notebooks in the 1830s to the early years of the Modern Synthesis in the 1930s. Far from being a "pompous parade of arithmetic, as one early critic argued, evolution transformed during this period to make these conceptual and technical tools indispensable. This book charts the role of chance in evolutionary theory from its beginnings to the earliest days of modern evolutionary theory, making it an ideal resource for evolutionary biologists, historians, philosophers, and researchers in science studies or biological statistics.
Note:
Intro -- The Rise of Chance in Evolutionary Theory: A Pompous Parade of Arithmetic -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1 Chance governs the descent of a farthing: Charles Darwin -- Darwin before the Origin -- Chance in the Origin of Species -- Chance after the Origin -- Chance, contained -- References -- Chapter 2 The wonderful form of cosmic order: Francis Galton -- Early sojourns -- Galton's early theory of heredity -- Toward a novel theory -- Galton's opus magnum -- Particulate inheritance -- Of chances and causes -- Natural selection, or supposed to be -- Why Galton? -- References -- Chapter 3 The only ultimate test of the theory of natural selection: The early years of biometry -- Pearson before biometry -- The collaboration in earnest: The crab papers -- Developing a controversy: Weldon and Bateson -- Natural selection without (and then with) adaptation -- A settled research program -- References -- Chapter 4 Here is the true gospel: Biometry after Mendelism -- New ports in new storms -- From Mendel to inheritance -- Of elements and chromosomes -- Taking stock -- Whither biometry? -- References -- Chapter 5 Reconciling the biometrical conclusions: Evolution from 1906 to 1918 -- Where not to look -- The late Pearson -- The late Bateson -- Statistics without a statistical theory of inheritance -- A mathematical theory of inheritance without statistics: The American school -- The speed of selection: R. C. Punnett -- Statistical inheritance in populations without selection -- The exception to the rule: George Udny Yule -- The view from the textbooks -- Robert Heath Lock's Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity, and Evolution (1906) -- J. Arthur Thomson's Heredity (1908) -- Edwin S. Goodrich's The Evolution of Living Organisms (1912) -- Textbooks to syntheses -- References.
,
Chapter 6 What natural selection must be doing: R. A. Fisher's early synthesis -- Fisher's sources -- The early years -- Interlude: Fisher at Rothamsted -- The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection -- Indeterminism, creativity, and physics in evolution: Fisher's philosophy of science -- Revisionist history -- Abstraction and statistical physics -- Hypothetical populations and empirical evidence -- Causation and indeterminism -- References -- Chapter 7 Conclusions, historiographical and philosophical -- A quick look back -- A comparative interlude: Gayon & -- Depew and Weber -- Looking outward -- References -- Index.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780323912914
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0323912915
Language:
English
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