A sperm whale's nose is a third of its body: 5,000 litres of oil. Heat exchanger for diving, or biosonar for hunting squid in the dark? Asking what it was adapted for produced both hypotheses; only measuring the clicks settled it. Sara Green's careful paper: doi.org/10.1007/s10441-014-9232-x
A Philosophical Evaluation of Adaptationism as a Heuristic Strategy - Acta Biotheoretica
Adaptationism has prompted many a debate in philosophy of biology but the focus is usually on empirical and explanatory issues rather than methodological adaptationism (MA). Likewise, the context of evolutionary biology has provided the grounding for most discussions of the heuristic role of adaptationism. This paper extends the debate by drawing on case studies from physiology and systems biology to discuss the productive and problematic aspects of adaptationism in functional as well as evolutionary studies at different levels of biological organization. Gould and Lewontin’s Spandrels-paper famously criticized adaptationist methodology for implying a risk of generating ‘blind spots’ with respect to non-selective effects on evolution. Some have claimed that this bias can be accommodated through the testing of evolutionary hypotheses. Although this is an important aspect of overcoming the pitfalls of adaptationism, I argue that the issue of methodological biases is bro
doi.org
