Adaptationism and Optimality

Elliott Sober is Hans Reichenbach Professor of Philosophy and William F. Vilas Research Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison where he has taught since 1974. His research is in philosophy of science, especially in the philosophy of evolutionary biology. Sober's books include The Nature of Selection - Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (1984), Reconstructing the Past - Parsimony, Evolution, and Inference (1988), Philosophy of Biology (1993), From a Biological Point of View - Essays in Evolutionary Philosophy (1994), and Unto Others - The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (1998), coauthored with David Sloan Wilson.

• Introduction; 1. A likelihood framework for the phylogenetic analysis of adaptation David A. Baum and Michael J. Donoghue; 2. Adaptation, phylogenetic inertia, and the method of controlled comparisons Steven Orzack and Elliott Sober; 3. Optimality and phylogeny: a critique of current thought Hudson Kern Reeve and Paul W. Sherman; 4. Fit of form and function, diversity of life, and procession of life as an evolutionary game Joel S. Brown; 5. Optimality and evolutionary stability under short-term and long-term selection Ilan Eshel and Marcus W. Feldman; 6. Selective regime and fig wasp sex ratios: towards sorting rigor from pseudo-rigor in tests of adaptation Edward Allen Herre, Carlos A. Machado, and Stuart A. West; 7. Is optimality over the hill? The fitness landscapes of idealized organisms George W. Gilchrist and Joel G. Kingsolver; 8. Adaptation, optimality, and the meaning of phenotypic variation in natural populations Kenneth J. Halama and David N. Reznick; 9. Adaptationism, optimality models, and tests of adaptive scenarios Peter Abrams; 10. Adaptation and development: on the lack of common ground Ron Amundson; 11. Three kinds of adaptationism Peter Godfrey-Smith; 12. Adaptation, adaptationism, and optimality Egbert Giles Leigh, Jr.