Adaptación y función. El papel de los conceptos funcionales en la teoría de la selección natural darwiniana

Santiago Ginnobili

Resumen


Adaptation and function: The role of functional concepts in the theory of Darwinian natural selection.

The scientific revolution of the XVII siècle is normally described as erasing final causes and the teleology of physics. Nevertheless, the functional language plays a central role in certain areas of biological practice. This is why many philosophers have tried to explicate the concept of function, sometimes to defend the relevance of its use, some other times to show that it is merely a way of speaking that could be easily eliminated without any relevant information loss. The principal purpose of this paper is to show the necessity of appealing to functional concepts for an adequate reconstruction of the Darwinian natural selection theory. Thus, functional language is used in the conceptualization of the theory’s domain of application, and that domain should be determined independently of the natural selection theory.

 

Key words: Function, Wright, etiological concept of function, natural selection theory, natural selection, Darwin, reconstruction, Structuralism, fundamental law of Natural Selection Theory.


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Referencias


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