Adaptationist Explanations in Biology: A Case Study

科学是一种社会现象，也就是说，从事科学研究的男女都带着先前的科学和社会承诺。劳埃德博士将利用这笔资金，研究这些先前的承诺对科学理论发展的影响。她的初步研究表明，在理论解释和现有证据之间必然存在的差距中，它们的影响最容易被看到。由于常常没有足够的证据来牢固地建立理论解释的基础，科学家就会把先前的科学信念和在社会中培养出来的一种倾向带到问题上，在社会中，科学发展为一种解释而不是另一种解释。这种发展的一个例子是优生学领域。科学家们从遗传学中获得了可用的证据，并将其与19世纪末和20世纪初社会中形成的种族和文化偏见相结合，发展了一种人类“净化”和完善的理论。虽然后果通常不像优生学那样极端，但这些因素显然在整个科学领域或多或少地产生了影响。劳埃德博士正在研究科学家们在进化生物学的科学解释发展过程中先前的承诺所产生的影响。她研究的理论承诺是“适应主义”的解释。“适应性”故事中，一种特殊的特征或特性被认为是自然选择直接作用的结果，这是最突出的一种进化解释。这些特征本身被视为一种适应，解释性游戏是提供对生物体的环境和生活方式的描述，揭示拥有这些特征如何有助于其所有者的繁殖成功。可以有许多听起来合理的适应性解释来解释一个特定的特征。在这种情况下，证据很少足以成为决定性的。在这种情况下，社会取向，或者说偏见，会导致科学家倾向于一种解释而不是另一种。在劳埃德博士正在研究的案例中，人类女性性行为的独特方面，男性科学家和他们的女权主义批评者都使用了不同的适应性论点来支持各自的立场。Lloyd博士将在对进化生物学中适应性解释的使用和滥用进行更广泛讨论的背景下分析这些解释。她的研究不仅对科学哲学，而且对进化生物学和社会科学都有很大的兴趣。

Science is a social phenomena, i.e. it is done by women and men who come to their subjects with prior scientific and social commitments. Dr. Lloyd, with this grant, will be studying the affects of these prior commitments on the development of scientific theories. Her preliminary study shows that their impacts can best be seen in the gaps which necessarily exist between theoretical explanations and the available evidence. Given that there frequently is not enough evidence to firmly ground a theoretical explanation, a scientist brings to the problem both prior scientific beliefs and an inclination which has been cultivated in the society in which the science is developed for one kind of explanation over another. An example of such a development is the field of eugenics. Scientists took the available evidence from genetics and assimilated it with the racial and cultural biases which were cultivated in late 19th and early 20th century society and developed a theory for the "purification" and perfection of the human race. While consequences are not normally as extreme as in the case of eugenics, these factors clearly have an effect to a greater or lesser degree throughout science. Dr. Lloyd is examining the impact of the prior commitments of scientists in the development of their scientific explanations in evolutionary biology. The theoretical commitment which she is examining is that of "adaptationist" explanations. "Adaptive" stories in which a particular trait or property is assumed to have resulted from the direct operation of natural selection are the most prominent sort of evolutionary explanations. The traits themselves are seen as adaptations and the explanatory game is to provide a description of the environment and lifestyle of the organism which reveal how the possession of the trait would have contributed to the reproductive success of its owner. There can be a number of rational sounding adaptive explanations developed to explain a particular trait. Evidence is rarely sufficient to be determinative in such a situation. It is in such a situation that social orientations, biases if you will, lead scientists to prefer one explanation over another. In the case which Dr. Lloyd is studying, the unique aspects of female sexuality in humans, both male scientists and their feminist critics have used differing adaptive arguments for their respective positions. Dr. Lloyd will analyze these explanations in the context of a more general discussion of the use and abuse of adaptive explanations in evolutionary biology. Her study promises to be of great interest not only for the philosophy of science, but also for evolutionary biology and the social sciences.