In this paper I critically evaluate Reisman and Forber’s (Philos Sci 72(5):1113–1123, 2005) arguments that drift and natural selection are population-level causes of evolution based on what they call the manipulation condition. Although I agree that this condition is an important step for identifying causes for evolutionary change, it is insufficient. Following Woodward, I argue that the invariance of a relationship is another crucial parameter to take into consideration for causal explanations. Starting from Reisman and Forber’s example on drift and after having briefly presented the criterion of invariance, I show that once both the manipulation condition and the criterion of invariance are taken into account, drift, in this example, should better be understood as an individual-level rather than a population-level cause. Later, I concede that it is legitimate to interpret natural selection and drift as population-level causes when they rely on genuinely indeterministic events and some cases of frequency-dependent selection.

中文翻译：

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自然选择和漂移作为个体层面的进化原因

在本文中，我批判性地评估了 Reisman 和 Forber (Philos Sci 72(5):1113–1123, 2005) 的论点，即漂移和自然选择是基于他们所谓的操纵条件的进化的种群级原因。虽然我同意这种情况是确定进化变化原因的重要步骤，但这还不够。继伍德沃德之后，我认为关系的不变性是另一个需要考虑因果解释的关键参数。从 Reisman 和 Forber 关于漂移的例子开始，在简要介绍了不变性标准之后，我表明，一旦将操纵条件和不变性标准都考虑在内，在这个例子中，漂移应该更好地理解为一个个体——水平而不是人口水平的原因。之后，