Seance1 Hull 1969
Seance1 Hull 1969
Seance1 Hull 1969
H U L L
WHAT PHILOSOPHY O F B I O L O G Y IS N O T *
scendingly that Teilhard "had about him that innocence which makes it
easy to understand why the forger of the Piltdown skull should have
chosen [him] to be the discoverer of its canine teeth". 14 Also character-
istic of this body of literature is the view that, in the last analysis, Aristotle
was right. Aristotle's concept of Nature provides a badly needed philo-
sophie dimension to biology. DNA exists. Hence, Aristotle was right.
One feature of efforts such as those of Van Melsen's to discover what
consequences evolutionary theory has for man is that evolutionary theory
as a scientific theory plays no role whatsoever in his exposition. All he
would have needed to know in order to develop his thesis is that man
evolved from other animals and that living creatures developed from non-
living matter. All the intricacy of evolutionary relationships, the diffi-
culties with various mechanisms, the recalcitrant data, the wealth of
supporting evidence are passed over. Whatever philosophy of biology
might be, this is not it. 15
One exception among those philosophers who are primarily interested
in evolutionary theory because of its possible consequences for the nature
of man is T. A. Goudge. 16 In his book The Ascent of Life he goes to the
trouble of providing a philosophically oriented analysis of modern evo-
lutionary theory. Since his views on evolutionary theory are not especially
controversial and depart in no important respect from those of the biolo-
gists he cites in his preface (Carter, Dobzhansky, Haldane, Huxley, Mayr,
Muller, Simpson, and Wright), one might wonder what point there could
be in a philosopher going over the same ground. This perplexity can be
dispelled quickly be reading the book. Goudge's whole approach to the
subject is different from that of a scientist. He does not organize his expo-
sition according to various kinds of empirical phenomena (e.g., kinds of
species, isolating mechanism, hybridization, populations, genetic re-
combination, etc.) but according to the logically important differences to
be found among the phenomena (e.g., the historical aspects of recon-
structing particular phylogenetic sequences, the peculiar nature of his-
torical explanations, the causal aspects of evolution and the systematic
explanations made possible by certain evolutionary laws and law-like
statements). Only after such an analysis does he turn his attention to the
implications of evolutionary theory for man.
Goudge is very cautious in his assessment of the place of man in evo-
lution, but the importance he puts on the question is indicated by the
WHAT PHILOSOPHY OF B I O L O G Y IS N O T 163
title of his book. He is interested in the ascent of life and whether man
is at its forefront. Goudge argues that in spite of retrogressive periods,
more diverse kinds of organisms are alive today than ever before and a
higher percentage of more recent organisms are biologically more efficient
than earlier organisms. As far as man is concerned, he is extremely
flexible in his adaptiveness. He is a dominant type and the dominant
primate. He is also "almost certainly the youngest species of mammal
now on earth" and as such "there is a sense in which he is quite literally
the highest species",x7 As cautious as these claims are, Goudge goes too
far. There is no evidence to indicate that man is the youngest species of
mammal and, even if he were, he would hardly thereby become the highest
species. Perhaps the highest species of mammal, but hardly the highest
species period. Man is very efficient, flexible in his adaptiveness, and so
on. So are cockroaches. Man is unique. So are cockroaches. Only when
Goudge leaves the realm of such strictly biological features of man does
the uniqueness claim for man begin to carry some weight. Only man has
developed culture and has been able thereafter to pass on information by
more direct means than can other organisms. Hence, new possibilities and
new difficulties have opened up for the future development of man.
Enough has been said, I think, to show how unsuccessful contemporary
philosophers have been in extracting the consequences of biology for
philosophy. What of the other side of the coin? Have philosophical analy-
ses of biology provided any insights into biological phenomena, any clarity
which biologists themselves have been unable to provide, a deeper under-
standing of biological theories? When philosophers have turned their
attention to biology they have tended to limit themselves to a few issues -
vitalism, teleology, reductionism, and related topics. One thing is obvious
from this list. Philosophers have not been motivated in their choice of
topics by any concern with issues currently of interest to biologists.
From the point of view of contemporary biology, both vitalism and
teleology are stone cold dead. No better proof can be found than that
offered by recent attempts to argue to the contrary,is In support of
vitalism the observation is made that living creatures are not just matter
but structured matter and that the world exhibits finality because regular-
ities exist. The major problem with this defense of vitalism and teleology
is that no materialist or mechanist ever held any differently. Even though
much of the heat generated by these controversies was due to misleading
164 DAVID L. HULL
Though the argument itself proceeds a priori, because the premises are empirical it can
yield conclusions which are also empirical. That living organisms all tend to reproduce
themselves at a geometrical ratio of increase; that the resources they need to sustain
life are limited; and that while each usually reproduces after its kind sometimes there
are variations which in their turn usually reproduce after their kind: all these propo-
sitions are nonetheless contingent and empirical for being manifestly and incontestably
true. That there is a struggle for existence; and that through this struggle for existence
natural selection occurs: both of these propositions equally are nonetheless contingent
and empirical for the fact that it follows, necessarily as a matter of logic apriori, that
wherever the first three hold the second two must hold alsoY
Everything which Flew says is true, important and needs saying, with
one exception. Neither of his conclusions follow deductively from the
premises which he presents. All that can be deduced is that not all those
organisms which are born will survive. Flew is aware that he has not
presented a rigorous deduction. To do that "one would have to construct
for all the crucial terms definitions to include explicitly every necessary
assumption". 2s Though he himself does not attempt such a rigorous
reconstruction, he believes that such an endeavor would be " a n exercise
which might prove instructive". 29 Anyone who undertakes this exercise
WHAT PHILOSOPHY OF B I O L O G Y IS N O T 167
will find that it is highly instructive and a good deal more than an exercise.
The only step which Flew takes toward such definitions is to identify
surviving to reproduce with being the fittest. He observes that if this
identification is not made, the deductive argument which he has set out
is no longer valid.
The question of whether certain basic principles of a scientific theory
are analytically connected within that theory is neither new nor unique
to evolutionary theory, but in order to connect fitness analytically with
actual survival, a distinction fundamental to evolutionary theory and to
science in general must be ignored. This distinction is the difference be-
tween what could happen, given the appropriate laws, and what actually
does happen. For instance, given Newton's laws, a planet m u s t revolve
around a star in a conic section. Which of these possible paths the planet
actually takes depends upon the particular make-up and history of that
star system. Similarly, biologists want to retain the distinction between
which organisms do in point of fact survive and those which have the
greatest likelihood of surviving - and they define 'fitness' in terms of the
latter notion. Every organism which could survive, given the appropriate
laws, does not survive. 'Accidents' do happen and are frequently im-
portant in evolution, especially in small populations. The appropriate
laws in this case are those of physiology, ecology, embryology, and so on.
It may well be true that in principle all macroscopic phenomena are
governed by deterministic laws and that all these laws can be organized
into a deductive hierarchy, but biologists do not have these laws. The
laws which give substance to the claim that an organism which did not
survive was nevertheless exceedingly fit are currently not deducible from
evolutionary theory and are formally independent of it. Until the day that
biologists can organize all of the relevant parts of biology into one grand
deductive hierarchy and know all the relevant antecedent conditions for
the evolutionary phenomena under study, not only are they entitled to
retain the distinction between what organisms actually survive and those
that are the fittest, they must.
Flew can be seen to vacillate on precisely this issue in his comments
concerning the survival of the fittest. Sometimes he says that "actual or
possible survival is to be construed as the sufficient condition of fitness
to survive". Sometimes he says that "actual survival to reproduce is itself
within Darwin's theory the sole and sufficient criterion for fitness to
168 D A V I D L. H U L L
she tries to establish that, as far as the evidence is concerned, the two
theories are about on a par. She claims that Simpson and Schindewolf
"disagree seldom, if at all, about the 'facts'". The two theories merely
"provide alternative frameworks for understanding the data". Although
for some details one point of view is preferable, for other details the other
point of view is preferable. Thus, "it seems to be purely a matter of choice
which we prefer .... Perhaps what we need, then, is a more inclusive
theory, which will assimilate adequately both sides of the ambiguity",z5
After establishing to her own satisfaction the equality of the two
theories as far as the evidence is concerned, she proceeds to argue that
Schindewolf's theory is more adequate than that of Simpson on epistemo-
logical grounds. Simpson claims not to make use of types in an epistemo-
logically significant sense; that is, he may occasionally refer to types, but
he claims that in no instance does he suppose that natural kinds can or
must be defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions.86 The
reason that Schindewolf's theory is more adequate than Simpson's is that
he admits types and makes them a part of his theory, whereas Simpson
makes use of them surreptitiously, though they are incompatible with his
theory. Grene does not claim that "Schindewolf's type-theory is ade-
quately explanatory. Only that it is not self-contradictory and so is at
least a possible starting-point for a s k i n g philosophical q u e s t i o n s - not for
giving philosophical answers, as my critics suggested I mean to do. ''37
What is to be said of Grene's argument? In the first place, almost all
biologists disagree with her assessment of the evidence. Taking the two
theories on a whole, the vast majority of the evidence supports the syn-
thetic theory, and it is in just those cases where Schindewolf departs most
radically from the synthetic theory that the evidence is most decidedly
against him. 3s For example, Grene cites Schindewolf's belief that basi-
cally new types or patterns of organization have a 'sudden origin'. There
were no feathered creatures. Then there were. The fossil evidence happens
not to be decisive on this issue, but given what we know of genetics and
physiology, it is unlikely that such macro-phenotypic changes resulting
from mutation could occur in the space of a single generation and the
results be viable - even once, let alone in the origin of every new type.
It does not help in the least to say that the gross phenotypic changes were
due to micromutations early in development. The magnitude of the
change in the genetic make-up is not at issue but the magnitude of the
170 D A V I D L. H U L L
case. Biologists had to work out the appropriate distinctions and termi-
nology for themselves. At this same time philosophers were producing
parallel accounts. 471 have asked several of the biologists involved whether
they found these accounts helpful. They replied in the negative. What was
the reason for this failure in communication? Two factors combined to
keep the work of these philosophers from having any significant impact
on biology. In setting forth these factors, I do not mean to imply that all
parties were equally guilty in every respect or that some of the blame
cannot be laid at the feet of biologists. I really am not so much interested
in fixing blame as in discovering the causes for this failure in communi-
cation.
First of all, philosophers tend to exhibit what can only be described as
disdain for the issues and distinctions which biologists find important.
For example, in his 1950 paper John R. Gregg argues that species are
classes, not individuals, and that the relation between an individual
organism and the species to which it belongs is membership, not the
part-whole relation. 4s These issues were raised because two biologists had
advanced independently the notion that species are as much concrete,
spatiotemporal things as are individual organisms. On this score I think
Gregg is right, but in his arguments Gregg seems almost willfully blind
to the reasons these biologists might have had for making such an as-
sertion. The point that they were trying to make was that species are not
just sets, just collections of isolated individuals like the class of all things
smaller than a breadbox. The members of a species are interrelated in
numerous biologically significant ways, among which is spatiotemporal
proximity. The ontological questions of whether a class can be identified
with its members, whether the class of all cells that compose an organism
is identical to the class of all molecules that compose that organism, or
for that matter, whether the whole universe can be viewed as an organism
are irrelevant to the issues raised by these biologists. Gregg says that this
problem "is a pseudo-taxonomic one which is resolved by reference to
the semantic structure of language, and upon which no purely biological
evidence (geographical distribution, interbreeding relations, etc.) has the
slightest bearing whatsoever". 49 If so, then Gregg has misidentified the
problem.
The second factor which has contributed to the failure of communi-
cation between these philosophers and biologists is their method of doing
WHAT PHILOSOPHY OF B I O L O G Y IS N O T 173
The Biological Way of Thought. As might be expected from the fact that
his monograph is a contribution to the International Encyclopedia of
Unified Science, Mainx emphasizes the verifiability criterion of meaning-
fulness and the unity of science. The errors and conceptual dangers which
he most frequently points out in biological works are attempts to pass off
tautologies and metaphysical claims as empirically meaningful statements,
and a tendency among biologists for conceptual realism. Both of these
tendencies are worth bringing to the attention of biologists, but unfortu-
nately for Mainx's treatment, he fails to reflect the increased sophistica-
tion of the positivist position which had occurred since its inception. For
instance he sees tautologies everywhere because he accepts a rather facile
notion of the relationship between operations used to test the applica-
bility of a term and the definition of that term. He says in one place, for
example:
If in the statement"The positivephototacticreaction of a Euglenais proportional to
its light-requirement" the concept "light-requirement" is only testably defined by
means of the establishmentof the behaviorunder the stimulusof light, this is a tautol-
ogous statementof the above kind.5n
Behavior under the stimulus of light is certainly neither logically nor
physically the only way of 'testably defining' the concept 'light-require-
ment'. Hence, the statement is not tautologous. The same is true for most
of the examples which Mainx gives. Mainx would have done well to have
read Carl G. Hempel's earlier contribution to the same series on the
foundations of concept formation in empirical scienceY A careful read-
ing of this earlier monograph might also have suggested to him that the
basic distinction which pervades his book serves only to frustrate his
efforts to provide an adequate explication of the foundations of biology.
This distinction is between order-analytic statements, which express the
coexistence of characters, and causal-analytic statements, which express
a succession of states in time. As time-honored as this distinction is, it
just will not do as a characterization of the relationship between con-
cept formation and theory construction in science. For example, Mainx
recognizes three different viewpoints in biology - the morphological, the
physiological and the genetical. Although he warns the reader that these
three viewpoints overlap somewhat, he makes it sound as if a morpholo-
gist could analyze an organism into organs and tissues independently of
any knowledge of physiology, genetics or evolutionary descent. Further,
WHAT PHILOSOPHY OF B I O L O G Y IS N O T 177
REFERENCES
* This paper will also appear in the Journal of the History of Biology 2 (1969), No. 1.
1 Both restrictions in the scope of this paper have been ignored when special circum-
stances seemed to demand it. For example, Woodger began his career as a biologist
and published most of his work prior to the time limits set for this paper, but he has
produced a body of work in the philosophy of biology too important not to include.
Mario Bunge, 'The Weight of Simplicity in the Construction and Assaying of
Scientific Theories', Philosophy of Science 28 (1961) 120-149.
3 G. G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949;
G. G. Simpson, Principles of Animal Taxonomy, Columbia UniversityPress, New York,
1961 ; G. G. Simpson, This View of Life, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York,
1963; Ernst Mayr, Animal Species and Evolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass., 1963. In most instances the assertion that certain principles in the synthetic
theory of evolution are tautologous stems from an extremely superficial understanding
of evolutionary theory and an embarrassing uncertainty over the precise nature of
tautologies. For example, Murray Eden, in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-
Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution (ed. by P. S. Moorhead and M. M. Kaplan), The
Wistar Institute Press, Philadelphia, 1967, began with the assumption that the tauto-
logical nature of certain concepts in evolutionary theory was hardly controversial.
Under the onslaught of several biologists present, Eden retreated to the position that
perhaps 'tautology' was the wrong word. Rather such claims are supposedly vacuous.
From here he retreated to the assertion that the basic principles of evolutionary theory
did not form a theory, and finally he concluded that since one cannot provide a crucial
experiment to check whether or not the synthetic theory is false, it is in some sense
tautological or unfalsifiable. Karl Popper was fi'equently cited in this discussion as
maintainingthe last position. Anthony Flew, 'The Concept of Evolution: A Comment',
Philosophy 41 (1966) annihilates similar allegations by A. R. Manser, 'The Concept of
Evolution',Philosophy 40 (1965) 18-34, though he himself argues later that the principle
of the survival of the fittest must be made into a tautology, Anthony Flew, Evolutionary
Ethics, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1967. See also T. A. Goudge, The Ascent of Life,
University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1961.
4 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1966, pp. 450-456; Charles Darwin, The Descent
of Man, And Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols., Murray, London, 1871, p. 92.
5 Darwin, Origin, 472, 135.
6 Darwin, Origin, 468, 89-90.
7 j. W. Tutt, 'Melanism and Melanochroism in British Lepodoptera', Entomologists"
Record 1 (1890), 2 (1891).
s Peter Caws, The Philosophy of Science, D. Van Nostrand, Inc., Princeton, 1965, pp.
40-41.
180 DAVID L. HULL
phy of Science: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1968, and
V. E. Smith, Science and Philosophy, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1965.
20 See Beckner, Biological Way; Hugh Lehman, 'Functional Explanation in Biology',
Philosophy of Science 34 (1965) 1-19; J. V. Canfield, 'Teleological Explanation in
Biology', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 14 (1964) 285-295; J. V. Canfield
(ed.), Purpose in Nature, Prentice-Hail, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, 1966.
81 There is a large body of literature devoted to the problem of reduction. Recent
discussions of reduction in biology can be found in Grene, Knower; R. T. Blackburn
(ed.), Interrelations: The Biological and Physical Sciences, Scott, Foresman, Chicago,
1966; K. F. Schaffner, 'Approaches to Reduction', Philosophy of Science 34 (1967)
137-147; K. F. Schaffner, 'Antireductionism and Molecular Biology', Science 157
(1967) 644-647.
22 Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, 'The Logic of Explanation', Philosophy of
Science 15 (1948) 135-175.
28 Of all the papers devoted to the relevance of explanation in evolutionary theory to
the symmetry thesis, Michael J. Scriven in his 'Explanation and Prediction in Evo-
lutionary Theory', Science 130 (1959) 477-482, is the most concerned with evolutionary
theory as a biological theory, rather than as a handy source for an example. See also
Michael J. Scriven, 'Explanation, Prediction, and Laws', in Minnesota Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, vol. III (ed. by H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minne-
sota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, pp. 477-482; Adolf Griinbaum, 'Temporally Asym-
metric Principles, Parity between Explanation and Predicton, and Mechanism versus
Teleology', in Induction: Some Current Issues (ed. by B. Baumrin), Wesleyan University
Press, Middleton, 1963; Hugh Lehman, 'On the Form of Explanation in Evolutionary
Biology', Theoria 32 (1966) 14-24.
24 Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry, Chandler Publishing Company, San
Francisco, 1964.
25 Anthony Flew, 'The Structure of Darwinism', in M. L. Johnson, Michael Aber-
crombie & G. E. Fogg, New Biology, Penguin Books, Baltimore, 1959, pp. 25-44;
Flew Evolutionary Ethics.
26 Julian Huxley, The Process of Evolution, Chatto and Windus, London, 1953, p. 38.
27 Flew, 'Structure', 28.
28 Flew, 'Structure', 28.
29 Flew, 'Structure', 29.
8o Flew, Evolutionary Ethics, 14, 36, 14.
81 j. H. Woodger, BiologicalPrinciples, 1929 (2nd ed.: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.,
London, 1948), pp. 394, 402.
22 For differing opinions on these views, see W. B. Gallie, 'Explanation in History and
the Genetic Sciences', Mind 64 (1955) 161-167; R. P. Gould, 'The Place of Historical
Statements in Biology', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8 (1957) 192-210;
T. A. Goudge, 'Causal Explanations in Natural History', British Journal for the Phi-
losophy of Science 9 (1958) 194-202; Beckner, Biological Way; M. J. S. Rudwick, 'The
Inference of Function from Structure in Fossils', British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 15 (1964) 27--40.
83 Marjorie Grene, 'Two Evolutionary Theories', British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science 9 (1958) 110-127, 185-193.
84 Simpson, Meaning; O. H. Schindewolf, Grundfragen der Paliiontologie, Schweizer-
bart, Stuttgart, 1950.
85 Grene, 'Two Evolutionary Theories', 185-186.
182 DAVID L. HULL
5s Amazingly, two authors who should know better are guilty of exactly the same
confusion: Felix Mainx, Foundations of Biology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,
1955; Lancelot Hogben, Science in Authority, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New
York, 1963.
5~ Mainx, Foundations, 5.
s7 Carl G. Hempel, Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science, Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1952.
58 Mainx, Foundations, 3.
~9 Hoghen, Science; Sokal and Sneath, Principles; Ernst Mayr, 'Numerical Phenetics
and Taxonomic Theory', Systematic Zoology 14 (1965) 73-97; Robert R. Sokal, J. H.
Camin, F. J. Rohlf, and P. H. A. Sheath, 'Numerical Taxonomy: Some Points of
View', Systematic Zoology 14 (1965) 237-243; Colless, 'Examination'; Colless,
'Fallacy'.
~0 Beckner, Biological Way, 110-131.
61 See also, Woodger, Biology and Language; J. H. Woodger, 'Taxonomy and Evo-
lution', Nuova Critica 3 (1961) 67-78; J. H. Woodger, 'Biology and the Axiomatic
Method', Annals of the New York Academy of Science 96 (1962) 1093-1104; Douglas
Gasking, 'Clusters', Australasian Review of Psychology 38 (1960) 1-36; Hogben,
Science.
~z I wish to thank Ernst Mayr, Helen Heise, and Hugh Lehman for reading and
commenting on this paper. Special appreciation is owed to Marjorie Grene for doing
the same, even though several of her own ideas were severely criticized in the paper.
This paper was prepared under grant GS-1971 of the National Science Foundation.