The editors begin by stating that "philosophy of science is one of the most vigorous and exciting areas in modern philosophy" (xix). They could have added that it is also the area of modern philosophy with some of the most fundamental implications for social sciences including psychology because of the role it plays in the current push to extend the relevance of evolution beyond biology.

This volume, just like the others in the Cambridge Companion series, consists of a collection of specially commissioned essays on topics within the discipline in question. Hull and Ruse are two of the founders of philosophy of biology, and the contributors are mainly younger but influential scholars working with the area. The collection provides a carefully selected cross-section of the current research, the twenty three individual essays being written in a way that allows the readers to 'join the conversation' at the point it has reached. Significantly, the editors have managed to organize the collection in a way that brings out an overarching narrative whose conceptual backbone is provided by the theory of evolution. The first few articles focus on the concepts that have proved the most troublesome for contemporary philosophy of biology such as adaptation, units of selections, genes and information. This discussion naturally leads to issues discussed within general philosophy of science but for which philosophy of biology has particular relevance, the most central one of these arguably being reduction. Having thus covered the basics, the focus of the collection broadens out to cover a number of issues within the biological sciences that philosophers have been working on recently. The topics here are as manifold as the biological organisms that biology deals with. Rather than deal with each article, therefore, I will focus upon those that refer to topics of direct relevance to human psychology and behavior.

The first of these is Francisco Ayala's discussion of what he sees as the three challenges faced by human biology now that the human genome project has been completed. Ayala is rightly careful to downplay the overblown claims made by some proponents of the human genome project, pointing out that the project in itself answered very few questions but has provided us with the raw data that may, once analyzed, help to deal with the previously mentioned challenges, i.e. what Ayala calls the egg to adult transition, the brain to mind transition, and the ape to human transition. In explaining each of these challenges, Ayala quickly goes through the history of the attempts to understand them, for example sketching the route from Mendel's work to the discovery of homeobox genes. Ayala's explanations are relatively straightforward, such as could be found in a New Scientist article, and his paper is one of the few in the book that does not appear to attempt to make a substantive contribution of the issue it discusses. Less significantly perhaps, the paper appears to suffer from slightly careless editing in so far as it is repetitive and at times seemingly contradictory — Ayala first points out the insignificance of the humans as compared to the number and biomass of other species and then claims we are the most successful animal species on the basis of the probably false claim that we are the most numerous and widespread of mammals (rats and mice probably win that prize). Also peculiar is his claim that only humans modify their environment to suit their needs, one of his examples being the manufacture of clothes. Individual examples such as that of the hermit crab or the beaver might be thought to be quibbles but the issue is much larger than that given the popularity of the idea that organisms actively construct the environmental niches which they fill. None of this undermines the value of Ayala's article as an introduction to the general status quo in research on human biology, however.

Much more controversial is David Buller's comparison of evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology. Buller is well known for his book-length critical analysis of evolutionary psychology but in this essay he limits himself to criticizing the claim that the two research programs are compatible. This he does by bringing out the different assumptions they are working with regarding the adaptiveness of human behavior — evolutionary psychology claims that the behavior is adapted to Pleistocene conditions while human behavioral ecology holds that it adjusts flexibly to attain optimality under present-day conditions. In the process, Buller does an admirable job of introducing the main points of the two approaches. However, while he is right to stress the differences between the programs he should allow the possibility that different behaviors might require different approaches: some behavior might be flexible and currently adaptive while other might represent a relatively hardwired response to no longer existing conditions.  Also, his conclusion that it is human behavioral ecology that holds more promise does not follow from what he states within this article, especially given the open controversy surrounding the optimizing assumptions that are central to that approach.

Valerie Gray Hardcastle's discussion of the philosophy of neurobiology takes a very different tack.  Starting with the current research in neurobiology she ties it to several of the key issues within general philosophy of science, including to the nature of scientific theories, the theory-ladenness of observations and the role of reduction within science.  As a result, light is cast both upon the details of current neurobiology and on philosophical understanding of science in general.  A good example of this is the connection Hardcastle points to between limitations in available brain imaging methods and the reductionist conclusions drawn.

One of the areas of human behavior which have been most often considered from an evolutionary point of view is that of human sexuality.  Christopher Horvath's article does the twin job of introducing the research that has been done on the possible evolutionary roots of homosexuality and of arguing against their relevance for any moral evaluation of it.  Horvath discusses the kin selection hypothesis that has been popular for a number of years and argues that the alternative non-adaptive hypothesis, which holds that male homosexuality is the result of maternal antibody response to later male fetuses, is replacing it as the dominant explanation for male homosexuality.  At the same time he argues against drawing any ethical conclusions from this on the grounds that homosexuality should be evaluated on the basis of its effects and not its causes, and these remain the same regardless of what the correct evolutionary explanation happens to be.

One tool used to analyze behavior is that of game theory.  Zachary Ernst's introduction to it focuses on the role game theory has played in improving our understanding of altruism by letting scientists test out their ideas on concrete models.

While the articles are approachable, the Hull and Ruse volume does not feel like a dry introductory text that goes methodically through the central theses so much as an enthusiastic presentation of the richness of the discipline.  Given free rein to present their points of view, the contributors share their fascination with their topics.  As such, the collection sit somewhere between a compilation of classic articles — such as Hull and Ruse's 1998 Philosophy of Biology, which contains most of the discipline's essential articles — and a single author volume that carefully lays out the basics — such as Sterelny and Griffiths' 1999 Sex and Death.  Depending upon individual preferences any one of these books may serve to bring a reader up to date with the current debates in the area.  Taken together, they are more than enough for even the most demanding graduate course.

© 2008 Konrad Talmont-Kaminski

Konrad Talmont-Kaminski was educated in Australia and Canada but is working in Europe, at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Vienna, Austria, and at the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland. His work has focused upon understanding rationality from a pragmatist, naturalist perspective. It is in that context that he is examining superstition as a natural, cognitive phenomenon.

Keywords: philosophy, science, biology, review