Synthesising arguments and the extended evolutionary synthesis

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Highlights

  • Argues against evaluating the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (‘EES’) using theoretical virtues (a ‘virtue-based’ strategy).

  • Supports an ‘agenda-based’ strategy that evaluates the empirical aptness of the EES to pursue specific research objectives.

  • Using niche construction as a case study, shows how the agenda-based strategy can analyse disagreements over the EES.

Abstract

Synthesising arguments motivate changes to the conceptual tools, theoretical structure, and evaluatory framework employed in a given scientific domain. Recently, a broad coalition of researchers has put forward a synthesising argument in favour of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (‘EES’). Often this synthesising argument is evaluated using a virtue-based approach, which construes the EES as a wholesale alternative to prevailing practice. Here I argue this virtue-based approach is not fit for purpose. Taking the central concept of niche construction as a case study, I show that an agenda-based approach better captures the pragmatic and epistemological goals of the EES synthesising argument and diagnoses areas of empirical disagreement with prevailing practice.

Introduction

Does evolutionary theory need ‘expanding’ or ‘extending’? Recently, a number of researchers have answered in the affirmative. Diagnosing deficits in what they label ‘standard’, ‘traditional’, ‘Neo-Darwinian’, or frequently, ‘Modern Synthesis’ evolutionary theory, these researchers argue for a different approach to evolutionary theory. These synthesising arguments are attempts at bringing about a broad reorganisation of the concepts, methods, explanatory standards, and structure of evolutionary research.1

The component parts of these synthesising arguments—novel concepts, methods, causal machinery, and evaluative standards—are objects of continuing philosophical attention.2 Here, however, I focus on how synthesising arguments in general are taken to motivate alternate theoretical frameworks. I do so by examining Kevin Laland and colleagues' ‘Extended Evolutionary Synthesis’ (hereafter; ‘EES’). Their synthesising argument holds that prevailing evolutionary research obscures important evolutionary phenomena; notably the plastic nature of organismic development, non-genetic sources of inheritance, and the active role of organisms in modifying evolutionary trajectories. Highlighting the causal complexity of evolutionary processes through work in evolutionary developmental biology, parental effects, and niche construction, EES proponents argue for a radically updated evolutionary theory.

My aim is to outline how synthesising arguments, like the one made by EES proponents, should be evaluated. As I show in more detail below, EES proponents and sceptics frequently apply a virtue-based approach. This takes synthesising arguments to motivate full-scale alternatives to prevailing practice—distinct packages of concepts, models, theoretical assumptions and explanatory standards. So understood, the respective merits of synthesising arguments can be compared to prevailing practice by contrasting the extent to which each displays theoretical virtues. Yet I will argue that this virtue-based approach is unsuited to evaluating the EES synthesising argument insofar as it obscures the pragmatic, empirical, and epistemological reasoning that motivates proponents. I argue instead for an agenda-based strategy. This evaluates synthesising arguments on the basis of their ability to mobilise empirically apt machinery in the pursuit of structured research agendas (Brigandt & Love, 2010; Love, 2010). Using the debate around niche construction as a case study, I show how adoption of the agenda-based approach provides a more illuminating evaluatory framework for the EES synthesising argument.

Section snippets

Challenging standard evolutionary theory

Developed across multiple publications and drawing on expertise from a number of empirical and philosophical literatures, the EES synthesising argument is a highly visible attempt at challenging the consensus practice of researchers in evolutionary biology (Kitcher, 1993; Buskell, 2019). And while many authors support the EES (e.g. Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Müller, 2007; Müller & Pigliucci, 2010; Pigliucci, 2007, 2009), their views differ in both subtle and substantial ways. Here I focus on the

The virtue-based approach

EES proponents are adamant that their framework marks a departure from “‘business as usual’ science: it requires conceptual change.” (Laland et al., 2015, p. 10) As they see it, the concepts they put forward “are neither part of nor implied by the Modern Synthesis.” (Pigliucci, 2008, p. 75). And these are important to boot; these “additional evolutionary processes […] are more than just non-essential ‘add-ons’ and may be as important in shaping evolution as those recognized within the field

Comparing and evaluating the EES

So far, so irenic. Yet the agenda-based strategy does not reduce all disagreement to a frictionless pursuit of different research aims. There are opportunities for genuine conflict, but the agenda-based approach suggests that these will predominantly be local in character—relativized to particular research questions. Instead of a picture where concepts are evaluable on the basis of greater or lesser empirical content, an agenda-based approach evaluates empirical aptness in the pursuit of

Conclusion

Synthesising arguments are attempts at reorganising scientific research. Here I have argued that these attempts at reorganisation motivate different problem agendas—and that when these occur within the same domain of research, these can be usefully understood as different theory presentations—that employ distinct collections of concepts, evaluative frameworks, models, and assumptions. Looking at the role of niche construction in Laland and colleagues' synthesising argument for the EES, I've

Acknowledgements

Research leading to this publication was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (60501).

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