The early history of chance in evolution

Abstract

Work throughout the history and philosophy of biology frequently employs 'chance', 'unpredictability', 'probability', and many similar terms. One common way of understanding how these concepts were introduced in evolution focuses on two central issues: the first use of statistical methods in evolution (Galton), and the first use of the concept of "objective chance" in evolution (Wright). I argue that while this approach has merit, it fails to fully capture interesting philosophical reflections on the role of chance expounded by two of Galton's students, Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon. Considering a question more familiar from contemporary philosophy of biology -the relationship between our statistical theories of evolution and the processes in the world those theories describeis, I claim, a more fruitful way to approach both these two historical actors and the broader development of chance in evolution.

Academic Inbreeding Revisited: A Unified Index and a Quantitative Study of Academic Outputs

“…3 and Equation ( 2), although univariate regression can only explain 25.8% of the data variance, the regression equation is statistically significant (p < 0.01). Interestingly, the results of Equations ( 2) is very similar to that in the groundbreaking work of Francis Galton on the relationship between father and son's height (Pence, 2015). Affected by discipline level, age, professional title, gender, and other potential factors (Heffernan, 2018;McNaught, 2020;Carter et al, 2021), by including only one predictive variable, STAII, it is insufficient to accurately explain or fit the output score, but STAII shows a definite positive contribution to the output score.…”

Darwin’s empirical claim and the janiform character of fitness proxies

“…Natural selection on the basis of the match of the organism with the environment gains its evolutionary relevance only under two assumptions: first, the assumption of the heritability of variation, which is supported in later chapters of the Origin with a plethora of empirical examples, and second, the idea that the range of variation is not fixed, but always centered at the actual parameter value so that the limits of 4 For a discussion of Darwin's understanding of chance and of the different concepts of chance that can be discerned, see Shanahan (1991), Pence (2015) and Hodge (2016); for 'chance' in particular in Darwin's later writings: Beatty (2006) and Lennox (2010); for a more encompassing account, Johnson (2015). 5 Darwin relied on a long tradition of the metaphor of the economy of nature.…”

The many chances of Charles Darwin

“…(Darwin, 1859, p. 131) But the simplicity of this disavowal (and the implication, thereby, that there exists only one notion of "chance" in Darwindchance as ignorance of true causes) masks the depth and sophistication of Darwin's thought on the matter. As has been argued by numerous commentators (Beatty, 2006;Depew & Weber, 1995;Hodge, 1987;Hull, 1973;Pence, 2015), chance is one of the most subtle and interesting topics in Darwin's thought, and studying it can shed light on the way in which Darwin understood areas of biology as disparate as the causal structure of natural selection and the morphology of orchids.…”