Introduction: Evolution and historical explanation

Harrison, Peter; Hesketh, Ian

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.12.010

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Phylogenetic Analysis: Reconstructing the Past As a historical science, evolutionary biology shares characteristics with other natural sciences, such as physics and chemistry, as well as other historical sciences, such as anthropology and archaeology (Harrison and Hesketh 2016;Kaiser and Plenge 2014;Tucker 2014). Just like human historians who study the origin and trajectory of events (e.g., wars, revolutions), evolutionary biologists are, among other things, concerned with accounting for unique, localized events that happened in the pastfor example, the origin and evolutionary trajectory of species (see Beatty, Chapter 20;Currie 2014).…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trees’ Tale: Filigreed Phylogenetic Trees and Integrated Narratives

Kranke¹

2022

Narrative Science

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In this chapter, phylogenetic trees are discussed in the context of narrative science and historical explanation. Phylogenetic trees are predominantly bifurcating dendrograms that biologists use to represent evolutionary trajectories and patterns of shared ancestry. By means of a case study I explain how these diagrams are constructed, show that specialists read them as narratives and argue that they represent narrative explanations. Some phylogenetic trees not only consist of a branching structure and taxa names but include additional visual and textual elements. These filigreed trees are used in different contexts to represent integrated narratives (e.g., narratives of species migration, political and pedagogical narratives) that extend beyond evolutionary narratives of origin and divergence or narratives of shared ancestry. My chapter shows that diagrams as visual representations can be the central element of a scientific narrative and that narrative is used to create coherence between heterogeneous materials.

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Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trees’ Tale: Filigreed Phylogenetic Trees and Integrated Narratives

Kranke¹

2022

Narrative Science

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“…Evolutionary biology as a historical science shares characteristics with other sciences like chemistry and physics but also with human history (Harrison and Hesketh 2016;Kaiser and Plenge 2014). For example, historical explanations can be found in human history as well as in the historical sciences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two kinds of historical explanation in Evolutionary Biology

Kranke

2022

Biol Philos

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Historical explanations in evolutionary biology are commonly characterized as narrative explanations. Examples include explanations of the evolution of particular traits and explanations of macroevolutionary transitions. In this paper I present two case studies of explanations in accounts of pathogen evolution and host-pathogen coevolution, respectively, and argue that one of them is captured well by established accounts of time-sequenced narrative explanation. The other one differs from narrative explanations in important respects, even though it shares some characteristics with them as it is also a population-level historical explanation. I thus argue that the second case represents a different kind of explanation that I call historical explanation of type phenomena. The main difference between the two kinds of explanation is the conceptualization of the explanandum phenomena as particulars or type phenomena, respectively. Narrative explanations explain particulars but also deal with generalization, regularities and type phenomena. Historical explanations of type phenomena, on the other hand, explain multiply realizable phenomena but also deal with particulars. The two kinds of explanation complement each other because they explain different aspects of evolution.

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Introduction: Evolution and historical explanation

Cited by 2 publications

References 22 publications

The Trees’ Tale: Filigreed Phylogenetic Trees and Integrated Narratives

The Trees’ Tale: Filigreed Phylogenetic Trees and Integrated Narratives

Two kinds of historical explanation in Evolutionary Biology

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