Rapid biological advances and new standards of philosophical rigor are casting age-old questions about the nature and methodology of the biological sciences in a dramatic new light. Philosophy of Biology: An Anthology offers a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of the field’s most significant works. The text is organized to provide readers at all levels with a thorough grounding in the general history, philosophy, and science behind debates that remain at the heart of the philosophy of biology. Addressing the field’s central issues, sections draw on works relating to Darwinism and its influence on the biological sciences, evolution and chance, the unit of selection debate, adaptationism, evolutionary psychology, and the burgeoning science of evolutionary developmental biology, to name just a few. Editors’ introductions and further reading material throughout the text – combined with the readings themselves – provide novices with a solid basis on which to pursue further research in philosophy of biology.

Comprehensive in scope, Philosophy of Biology: An Anthology offers readers an accessible gateway into a field of study that holds the most crucial insights and implications into our understanding of the nature and methodology of the biological sciences.