Philosophy of biology has become a growth industry in recent years.  Beginning as a somewhat obscure sub-discipline of philosophy of science, it has now found its stride as a philosophical specialism with a set of questions all its own.  As someone who teaches the subject to undergraduates, and who is always on the lookout for a new and better textbook, I ordered this book with high expectations.  Sadly, I was disappointed.

Philosophy of Biology is a collection of 40 papers and excerpts, divided into 12 sections, which purportedly throw light on philosophical aspects of biology.  The first thing that struck me about the book was the section headings.  It seems odd to have substantial portions of a book on philosophy of biology taken up with topics like GM foods, the abortion debate, environmental ethics and theology.  Granted, these topics all have (or, in the last case, can have) biological implications, but they are not really topics that come under the philosophy of biology umbrella.

The next thing I noticed was the oddness of many of the selections.  Many of the chapters — in fact the bulk of them — were not written by philosophers (it's hard to tell, as there is no biographical information on the authors).  Non-philosophers include Paley, Darwin, Wilson, Mayer and Gould (who all seem appropriate, although three chapters by Gould seems excessive) but the book also contains grossly inappropriate selections like Chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Genesis, Prince Charles on genetically modified foods ("A Royal View"), and the "Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion". 

The third thing I noticed about the book was what is missing from it.  The discussion of natural teleology ought to have included Aristotle and representatives of the debate on biological function (e.g. Ruth Millikan, Karen Neander, Jerry Fodor, Robert Cummins).  The section on the species problem, one of the major issues in philosophy of biology, could have been beefed up considerably and there is nothing at all on the debate about the whether natural selection is a individual-level or population-level cause (or indeed a cause at all).  Further, there is nothing on the questions of whether biology is reducible to physics and whether there are biological laws, and nothing on the vexed question of levels of selection.

In short, this book was a wasted opportunity.  Ruse could have pulled together papers on the hot topics in philosophy of biology to produce a stimulating and informative overview of the field.  But he didn't, and that's a shame.

© 2008 David Livingstone Smith

David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England.  He is the author of The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, St. Martins Press, 2007.