Back to required reading

Survey piece on Adaptationism:

• Orzack, Steven Hecht and Forber, Patrick. (2010), Adaptationism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Maynard Smith defends adaptationist reasoning, Lewontin says it misrepresents the relationship between organisms and their environment, Orzack and Sober (and other Sober) distinguish different claims and try to test them, Griffiths looks at comparative methods and testing selection hypotheses, and Godfrey-Smith also distinguishes different types of adaptationism.

• Maynard Smith, John (1978), Optimization Theory in Evolution
• Lewontin, Richard. (1983), Adaptation (from The Dialectical Biologist)
• Orzack, Steven Hecht. and Sober, Elliott (1994), Optimality Models and the Test of Adaptationism
• Sober, Elliott (1998), Six Sayings about Adaptationism
• Griffiths, Paul (1996), The Historical Turn in the Study of Adaptation
• Godfrey-Smith, Peter (2000), Three Kinds of Adaptationism

Larry Moran, a biochemist at Toronto, posted about Dennett and adaptationism on his blog, Sandwalk. Dennett then responded.

• Original Moran post: Daniel Dennett's View of Adaptationism

An entire issue of Biology and Philosophy was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the Gould and Lewontin "Spandrals" paper with a number of helpful and interesting articles.

• Biology and Philosophy Volume 24, Number 2 - March 2009