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The Philosophy of Giology . By Michael Ruse. Hutchinson University Library. Toronto: J. M. Dent & Co., 1973. Pp. 231. $13.25 (hardcover); $6.50 (paperback).

The number of books on contemporary philosophy of biology steadily increases, and Professor Ruse has made a substantial addition to it. One notable feature of these books is that they contain a great many details from the biological sciences. In the past, philosophers attracted by biology often had only a nodding acquaintance with it. Yet the lack of specific knowledge did not prevent them from claiming its support for high-flying and high-sounding doctrines. When the foundations of modern philosophy of science were laid, chiefly by the logical empiricists, they ignored biological material and concentrated on the physical sciences with which they were familiar. All that is now changing, as Ruse's book illustrates. He ties his discussions to numerous details from genetics (Mendelian, population, and molecular), from evolutionary theory, and from taxonomy (phylogenetic and phenetic). In doing this he is contributing to the demonstration that philosophy of biology is fully as interesting and important as philosophy of physics; that it is, indeed, a "rich vein of problems waiting to be mined by philosophers and biologists" (p. 9). One might expect all this fresh material to have a modifying effect on the prevailing philosophy of science, since it was worked out in the light of physics. But Ruse does not see things that way. On the contrary, he indicates early in the book that he subscribes, more or less, to four basic claims of the establishment view about scientific theories. These claims are that a scientific theory has (a) two different kinds of terms, theoretical and observational; (b) two different kinds of statements — a priori, necessarily true statements (mathematics and logic), and empirically true, universal statements (laws); (c) a structure that is hypothetico-deductive and in principle axiomatic; (d) a single mode of explanation, viz, nomological or covering-law explanation which allows predictions to be made. To these Ruse adds the counter-empiricist claim that scientific laws have natural or nomic necessity, and are not just contingently true. The above claims exercise a strong control over the whole book. Most of the topics taken up relate directly or indirectly to them. For Ruse holds that the claims apply in the same degree to biology as they do to physics, (p. 11) Hence he argues that (a) and (b) are illustrated by Mendelian genetics (Ch. 2), and (c) and (d) by population genetics (Ch. 3). In discussing (b) he opposes Smart's contention that there are no genuine laws at all in biology. To support (c) he gives a derivation of the Hardy-Weinberg law from Mendel's first law plus certain assumptions. To support (d) he reconstructs in covering-law form a widely accepted explanation of the incidence of 'sickle-cell' anaemia among African children. He asserts that this explanation "is typical of population genetics" (p. 46), but offers no grounds for the assertion.