Basics: Introduction to Philosophy of Biology

When one is starting in a field for the first time, the choice of textbook is crucial, as it will often set the tone for the rest of one's study. Last year and the year before I helped teach Philosophy of the Life Sciences here, and we used, respectively, one textbook and no textbook. Right now I'm reading a rather marvellous book, that would have set me up years in advance of where I am now, so this got me thinking (it's the job description, you know): what are the textbooks on Philosophy of Biology, and what are their respective merits?

I'm going to ignore the various present and forthcoming anthologies (one of which I'm going to be partially to blame for), and focus on introductory texts. There are three main books, each with their own merits, that are used (if I missed any, mention them in the comments).

The first one represents the traditional text - a summary overview of certain issues dealt with from the author's perspective. This one is "Philosophy of Biology (Dimensions of Philosophy Series)" (Elliott Sober). The text is written in a philosophical style, and covers such issues as what evolutionary theory is, whether biology has laws, creationism/ID (Sober has a nice piece on this published just recently in Quarterly Review of Biology, downloadable as PDF here), fitness, the units of selection, adaptationism, issues on systematics (and he buys into the essentialism story, something I am unconvinced by, but at least it's the default view in the discipline), and sociobiology. As it was first written in 1992, it reflects the debate in the discipline in the 1980s, and is a bit (but only a bit) dated, although it was revised in 2000. Sober is not in everyone's taste, though. He is a fine philosopher who employs probability theory in epistemology, but some of this may be off-putting for early students (i.e., those who haven't done much of this sort of thing, for instance by doing an introductory epistemology course). My own students found it unsettling.

The second, which I am reading right now is "The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History (The Evolution of Modern Philosophy)" (Marjorie Grene, David Depew). Grene is a major scholar in the history of biology, and Depew is coauthor of a well known history of Darwinism: "Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection" (David J. Depew, Bruce H. Weber). This is the book I wish I had read 15 years ago. I love it in every respect. Grene is an expert in Aristotle and Descartes, as well as evolution, and the book begins with Aristotle (which is where all philosophy of biology must begin), but when it deals with the periods and actors I am directly familiar with as well, it is reliable and measured. But this may just reflect my own tastes. I never get into a field without reading the historical stuff from which the modern debate developed, for two reasons. One is that to know why the problems are problematic, one has to read the people who raised them, and the responses. You need, in short, to see how the battle came to the present pass. But the other reason is more important than that - people have been smart for a long time. Older writers can occasionally blow your socks off with some really interesting and helpful ideas.

That said, I don't always agree with their interpretations, especially of modern systematics, where they are overly dismissive of cladistics, and of recent work on species concepts and the species individualism thesis. Here I suspect the influence of Depew more than Grene, as he is a player in the aforementioned book.

In between these two extremes is the text "Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)" (Kim Sterelny, Paul E. Griffiths). This is a topical discussion of the issues at play in 1999, most of which remain on the table today. But it is more accessible than some of Sober, and less enmired in the history than Grene and Depew. However, it deals with some heavy topics and debates, and is not really, in my view, suitable for a complete novice. Paul and Kim are planning to revise it substantially in the near future.

So my recommendations for a novice are to read these in this order: Grene and Depew to understand the past and why the issues are presently as they are; followed by Sterelny and Griffiths to know what the present issues are in detail (these guys really know their stuff, which, being leading lights in the field, they can be expected to); followed by Sober to get some technical knowledge. But you may wish to (or be forced to by availability) read them in a different order - no matter. You will learn the issues one way or the other.