The inductive theory of natural selection: summary and synthesis
This is an incremental synthesis for theoretical biology, clarifying conceptual frameworks without addressing a specific practical problem.
The paper tackles the distinction between deductive and inductive forms of natural selection theory, focusing on inductive analysis to assign causes to observed population changes, but it does not present new empirical results or concrete numbers.
The theory of natural selection has two forms. Deductive theory describes how populations change over time. One starts with an initial population and some rules for change. From those assumptions, one calculates the future state of the population. Deductive theory predicts how populations adapt to environmental challenge. Inductive theory describes the causes of change in populations. One starts with a given amount of change. One then assigns different parts of the total change to particular causes. Inductive theory analyzes alternative causal models for how populations have adapted to environmental challenge. This chapter emphasizes the inductive analysis of cause.