History and Evolution

Edited by Matthew H. Nitecki & Doris V. Nitecki

Subjects: Philosophy And Biology
Series: SUNY series in Philosophy and Biology
Paperback : 9780791412121, 280 pages, July 1992
Hardcover : 9780791412114, 280 pages, July 1992

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Table of contents

Preface

Introduction

History: La Grande Illusion

Matthew H. Nitecki

Methodologies of Historical Explanations

The Structure of Narrative Explanation in History and Biology

Robert J. Richards

What's so Special About the Past?

Rachel Laudan

The Particular-Circumstance Model of Scientific Explanation

David L. Hull

The Historical Nature of Evolutionary Theory

Marc Ereshefsky

Historical Explanations and Evolutionary Biology

History and Evolutionary Processes

Douglas J. Futuyma

The Conditions for a Nomothetic Paleontology

David B. Kitts

Historical Science and Philosophy of History

A Threefold Parallelism for our Time? Progressive Development in Society, Science, and the Organic World

Michael Ruse

How Microevolutionary Processes Give Rise to History

Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson

Evolution and History: History as Science and Science as History

Garland E. Allen

Evolution of Scientific Theories and the Tension in Ecology

Lawrence B. Slobodkin

Contributors

Index

Description

The studies of evolutionary biology and of human history face the same kinds of problems and deal with the same processes. Both disciplines deal with similar questions in similar ways, but do the methods used produce comparable knowledge, and are the differences and similarities between these disciplines real?

This book examines the philosophy of historical and evolutionary studies; the objectivity and meanings of human and evolutionary histories; the evolutionary approaches to and the anlysis of history, historical approaches, and utilization of evolution; the logic of historical and evolutionary thinking and explanations; the identification of similarities, differences, and common problems of evolutionary biology and history; and what constitutes the major historical and evolutionary events.

Matthew H. Niteckiis Curator and Doris V. Nitecki is Associate Curator in the Department of Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.