Research Interests for Robert N Brandon

Robert N. Brandon (Ph.D. 1979, Harvard) joined the Duke Faculty in fall of 1979. He holds a joint appointment in Philosophy and Biology . He has published articles in Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Biology and Philosophy, PSA 1980 and PSA 1982, some of which have subsequently been anthologized. He has co-edited (with Richard Burian) Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversies over the Units of Selection (Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1984), and his book, Adaptation and Environment was published by Princeton University Press in 1990. His most recent book Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge) was published in 1996. During the spring of 1984 he had a visiting appointment at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. Brandon is a member of Duke's Center for the Philosophy of Biology.

Areas of Interest:

Philosophy of Science, 
Philosophy of Biology, 
Logic

Recent Publications

1. R.N. Brandon, “Why Reciprocal Altruism is Not a Kind of Group Selection” (with Grant Ramsey) in Biology and Philosophy, (2011) Vol. 26, 3: 385-400. (2011)
2. R.N. Brandon, “The Concept of the Environment in Evolutionary Theory,” in The Environment: Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, vol. 9 (ed. By M. O’Rouke and M. Slater) (2011), MIT Press
3. R.N. Brandon, “A General Case for Functional Pluralism,” in Function: Selection and Mechanisms (ed. by P. Huneman) (2011), Springer
4. with Roger Samson, Integrating Development and Evolution, edited by Roger Samson and Robert Brandon (2007), The MIT Press [author's comments]
5. The Principle of Drift: Biology's First Law, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. CII no. 7 (July, 2006), pp. 319-335, The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.