Articles and Chapters

1. Bouchard, F; Rosenberg, A, Fitness, Probability and the Principles of Natural Selection, in Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology Volume I (January, 2017), pp. 299-318.
   (last updated on 2026/01/09)

   Abstract:
   We argue that a fashionable interpretation of the theory of natural selection as a claim exclusively about populations is mistaken. The interpretation rests on adopting an analysis of fitness as a probabilistic propensity which cannot be substantiated, draws parallels with thermodynamics which are without foundations, and fails to do justice to the fundamental distinction between drift and selection. This distinction requires a notion of fitness as a pairwise comparison between individuals taken two at a time, and so vitiates the interpretation of the theory as one about populations exclusively.