HPS 0612 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Sickle-Cell Disease, Natural Selection 2, Hemoglobin

• School: Pitt
• Department: History and Philosophy of Science
• Course: HPS 0612
• Professor: James Woodward

Document Summary

Closely linked to function, but one cannot use notion of function to explain the notion of biological normality. Again, reference to normality is unavoidable: but malfunctions and functions can have evolutionary explanations. Since function of a trait is its explanation in terms of natural selection. (cid:862)function(cid:863) of the mutation is the benefit: it is the beneficial effects that are produced that are regarded as (cid:862)fu(cid:374)(cid:272)tio(cid:374)s(cid:863) Traits that are products of evolution and confer a benefit = positive contribution to reproductive success. 3: natural selection does not produce single unique optimal design that is shared by all members of a species, natural selection will eliminate some variations that are highly deleterious in terms of fitness (but not always the case) A(cid:373)u(cid:374)dse(cid:374), (cid:862)agai(cid:374)st no(cid:396)(cid:373)al fu(cid:374)(cid:272)tio(cid:374)s(cid:863: a(cid:373)u(cid:374)dse(cid:374) thi(cid:374)ks (cid:862)(cid:374)o(cid:396)(cid:373)al/a(cid:271)(cid:374)o(cid:396)(cid:373)al(cid:863) (cid:272)a(cid:396)(cid:396)(cid:455) ideologi(cid:272)al (cid:271)aggage, describing people as abnormal is marginalizing them by use of falsely objective criterion, attack on idea of biological normality, which wachbroit claimed was central to biology.