Evolutionary Narratives: A Cautionary Tale

Kennedy, Devereaux

doi:10.12735/sst.v1i1p12

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…“Fudging” is not meant pejoratively; it can be unintentional wishful thinking, and it incorporates the powerful psychological mechanism of hindsight bias . Hindsight bias influences the selection of events and reduces the consideration of alternatives . “When people know how an event turned out, they are usually unable to reproduce the judgments they would have made without outcome knowledge.…”

Section: The Narrative Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…44 Hindsight bias influences the selection of events and reduces the consideration of alternatives. 45,46 "When people know how an event turned out, they are usually unable to reproduce the judgments they would have made without outcome knowledge. Furthermore, they are unaware of their inability to recapture their pre-outcome state of mind."…”

Section: The Narrative Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Smith¹

2016

Evolutionary Anthropology

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Explanations of the historical origin of specific individual traits are a key part of the research program in paleontology and evolutionary biology. Why did bipedalism evolve in the human lineage? Why did some dinosaurs and related species have head crests? Why did viviparity evolve in some reptiles? Why did the common ancestor of primates evolve stereoscopic vision, grasping hands and feet, nails instead of claws, and large brains? These are difficult questions. To varying degrees, an explanation must grapple with (1) judgments about changes in fitness that might follow from a change in morphology - without actually observing behavior or measuring reproductive success, (2) the relationship between genes and traits, (3) limitations on doing relevant experiments, (4) the interpretation of causes that are almost certainly contingent, multifactorial, interactive, hierarchical, nonlinear, emergent, and probabilistic rather than deterministic, (5) limited information about variation and ontogeny, (6) a dataset based on the random fortunes of the historical record, including only partial hard-tissue morphology and no soft-tissue morphology, (7) an equally partial and problematic (for example, time-averaged) record of the environment, (8) the compression of all data into a geological time scale that is likely to miss biologically important events or fluctuations, (9) dependence on a process that can only be inferred ("form and even behavior may leave fossil traces, but forces like natural selection do not", ) and finally, (10) the assumption of the "adaptationist programme" that the trait in question is in fact an adaptation rather than a consequence of genetic drift, correlated evolution, pleiotropy, exaptation, or other mechanisms.

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Section: The Narrative Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Narrative Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Smith¹

2016

Evolutionary Anthropology

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“…Robinson (2014a), p.48. 96 Gould (1978);Kennedy (2014), p. 12. 97 Brown (2008), p. 363.98 Robinson (2014a), p. 58.99 Ibid., p. 61.100 Ibid., p. 18 (italics in the original).101 Ibid.102 Ibid.…”

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confidence: 99%

Primal Scene to Anthropocene: Narrative and Myth in International Environmental Law

2019

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License: Article 25fa pilot End User Agreement This publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet) with explicit consent by the author. Dutch law entitles the maker of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work. This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' pilot project. In this pilot research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication. You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyrights owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication other than authorised under this licence or copyright law is prohibited. If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons.

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Evolutionary Narratives: A Cautionary Tale

Cited by 2 publications

References 39 publications

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Explanations for adaptations, just‐so stories, and limitations on evidence in evolutionary biology

Primal Scene to Anthropocene: Narrative and Myth in International Environmental Law

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