Adaptationist Explanations in Biology: A Case Study
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{'SignBlockName': 'Alicia Armstrong', 'PO_EMAI': 'aarmstro@nsf.gov', 'PO_PHON': '7032924743'}
Science is a social phenomena, i.e. it is done by women and men who             come to their subjects with prior scientific and social commitments.            Dr. Lloyd, with this grant, will be studying the affects of these               prior commitments on the development of scientific theories.  Her               preliminary study shows that their impacts can best be seen in the              gaps which necessarily exist between theoretical explanations and the           available evidence.  Given that there frequently is not enough                  evidence to firmly ground a theoretical explanation, a scientist                brings to the problem both prior scientific beliefs and an                      inclination which has been cultivated in the society in which the               science is developed for one kind of explanation over another.  An              example of such a development is the field of eugenics.  Scientists             took the available evidence from genetics and assimilated it with the           racial and cultural biases which were cultivated in late 19th and               early 20th century society and developed a theory for the                       "purification" and perfection of the human race.  While consequences            are not normally as extreme as in the case of eugenics, these factors           clearly have an effect to a greater or lesser degree throughout                 science.  Dr. Lloyd is examining the impact of the prior commitments            of scientists in the development of their scientific explanations in            evolutionary biology.  The theoretical commitment which she is                  examining is that of "adaptationist" explanations.  "Adaptive"                  stories in which a particular trait or property is assumed to have              resulted from the direct operation of natural selection are the most            prominent sort of evolutionary explanations.  The traits themselves             are seen as adaptations and the explanatory game is to provide a                description of the environment and lifestyle of the organism which              reveal how the possession of the trait would have contributed to the            reproductive success of its owner.  There can be a number of rational           sounding adaptive explanations developed to explain a particular                trait.  Evidence is rarely sufficient to be determinative in such a             situation.  It is in such a situation that social orientations,                 biases if you will, lead scientists to prefer one explanation over              another.  In the case which Dr. Lloyd is studying, the unique aspects           of female sexuality in humans, both male scientists and their                   feminist critics have used differing adaptive arguments for their               respective positions.  Dr. Lloyd will analyze these explanations in             the context of a more general discussion of the use and abuse of                adaptive explanations in evolutionary biology.  Her study promises to           be of great interest not only for the philosophy of science, but also           for evolutionary biology and the social sciences.
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{'Code': '1353', 'Text': 'Hist & Philosophy of SET'}
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