Has Grafen formalized Darwin?

Birch, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/s10539-013-9421-z

Cited by 14 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Although social evolution researchers like to play the ‘phenotypic gambit’ and assume that the genetic basis of social traits is simple and conducive to adaptation [ 87 ], we must remember that this is a gambit—an opening bet—and not a well-supported empirical assumption. Genetic details often turn out to matter, and there are many reasons why a process of cumulative improvement may stall, or never get off the ground at all [ 82 , 83 ]. There is no reason to assume that these variables are generally favourable to cumulative improvement in natural populations, and there is no substitute for testing the underlying assumptions of optimality models empirically [ 88 , 89 ].…”

Section: Selection Design and Optimalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The inclusive fitness controversy: finding a way forward

Birch

2017

R. Soc. open sci.

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This paper attempts to reconcile critics and defenders of inclusive fitness by constructing a synthesis that does justice to the insights of both. I argue that criticisms of the regression-based version of Hamilton's rule, although they undermine its use for predictive purposes, do not undermine its use as an organizing framework for social evolution research. I argue that the assumptions underlying the concept of inclusive fitness, conceived as a causal property of an individual organism, are unlikely to be exactly true in real populations, but they are approximately true given a specific type of weak selection that Hamilton took, on independent grounds, to be responsible for the cumulative assembly of complex adaptation. Finally, I reflect on the uses and limitations of ‘design thinking’ in social evolution research.

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Section: Selection Design and Optimalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This does not imply that natural selection will always, often, or indeed ever succeed in generating cumulative improvement, let alone optimality, in the natural world. The question of how often this happens is not a question theory alone can settle [ 82 , 83 ].…”

Section: Selection Design and Optimalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The inclusive fitness controversy: finding a way forward

Birch

2017

R. Soc. open sci.

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“…Like Fisher's fundamental theorem, it may be that Grafen's fail to imply a biologically significant maximization principle and yet still provide important insights in other ways. One proposal, which I have criticized elsewhere, is that the links amount to a formal reconstruction of Darwin's argument in the Origin of Species (Birch, ; Grafen, ). Another proposal (made by Grafen, , and also by Okasha & Paternotte, ) is that the links provide formal constraints on an acceptable concept of individual fitness, constraints that turn out to be non‐trivially satisfied by Hamilton's () notion of inclusive fitness.…”

Section: What Do Grafen's Links Actually Show?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural selection and the maximization of fitness

Birch

2015

Biological Reviews

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The notion that natural selection is a process of fitness maximization gets a bad press in population genetics, yet in other areas of biology the view that organisms behave as if attempting to maximize their fitness remains widespread. Here I critically appraise the prospects for reconciliation. I first distinguish four varieties of fitness maximization. I then examine two recent developments that may appear to vindicate at least one of these varieties.The first is the 'new' interpretation of Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection, on which the theorem is exactly true for any evolving population that satisfies some minimal assumptions. The second is the Formal Darwinism project, which forges links between gene frequency change and optimal strategy choice. In both cases, I argue that the results fail to establish a biologically significant maximization principle. I conclude that it may be a mistake to look for universal maximization principles justified by theory alone. A more promising approach may be to find maximization principles that apply conditionally and to show that the conditions were satisfied in the evolution of particular traits.2

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“…The formal darwinism project has core papers (Grafen 1999 , 2000 , 2002 , 2006a , b ; Gardner and Grafen 2009 ; Batty et al. 2014 ; Grafen 2015b ) and an interpretative penumbra (Grafen 2007c , 2014a ), along with two applications (Grafen 2007a , b ) and discussions (Birch 2014 ; Bourke 2014 ; Ewens 2014 ; Gardner 2014 ; Haig 2014 ; Lehmann and Rousset 2014a ; Okasha and Paternotte 2014 ; Sarkar 2014 ; Shelton and Michod 2014 ). The current paper continues the core development, extending the philosophy to arbitrary classes, Markov environments and fluctuating demography.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining fitness in an uncertain world

2017

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The recently elucidated definition of fitness employed by Fisher in his fundamental theorem of natural selection is combined with reproductive values as appropriately defined in the context of both random environments and continuing fluctuations in the distribution over classes in a class-structured population. We obtain astonishingly simple results, generalisations of the Price Equation and the fundamental theorem, that show natural selection acting only through the arithmetic expectation of fitness over all uncertainties, in contrast to previous studies with fluctuating demography, in which natural selection looks rather complicated. Furthermore, our setting permits each class to have its characteristic ploidy, thus covering haploidy, diploidy and haplodiploidy at the same time; and allows arbitrary classes, including continuous variables such as condition. The simplicity is achieved by focussing just on the effects of natural selection on genotype frequencies: while other causes are present in the model, and the effect of natural selection is assessed in their presence, these causes will have their own further effects on genoytpe frequencies that are not assessed here. Also, Fisher’s uses of reproductive value are shown to have two ambivalences, and a new axiomatic foundation for reproductive value is endorsed. The results continue the formal darwinism project, and extend support for the individual-as-maximising-agent analogy to finite populations with random environments and fluctuating class-distributions. The model may also lead to improved ways to measure fitness in real populations.

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Has Grafen formalized Darwin?

Cited by 14 publications

References 10 publications

The inclusive fitness controversy: finding a way forward

The inclusive fitness controversy: finding a way forward

Natural selection and the maximization of fitness

Defining fitness in an uncertain world

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