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What Makes Biology Unique? by Ernst Mayr

By Ernst Mayr

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Biologists, even though they now rejected vitalism and cosmic teleology, were unhappy with a purely mechanistic (Cartesian) philosophy of biology. But all endeavors to escape from this dilemma – such as, ¨ and several for example, the writings of Jonas, Portmann, von Uexkull, others – invariably invoked some nonmechanical forces that were not acceptable to most biologists. The solution had to satisfy two demands: it had to be completely compatible with the natural laws of the physicists, and no solution was acceptable that would invoke any occult forces.

Indeed, much of genomics consists of the comparison of base pair sequences. Chance The natural laws usually effect a rather deterministic outcome in the physical sciences. Neither natural nor sexual selection guarantees such 33 what makes biology unique? determinism. Indeed, the outcome of an evolutionary process is usually the result of an interaction of numerous incidental factors. Chance with respect to functional and adaptive outcome is rampant in the production of variation. During meiosis, in the reduction division it governs both crossing-over and the movement of chromosomes.

I have previously presented a rather full history of the rise and fall of teleology in evolutionary biology, particularly in Darwin’s writings (Mayr 1988:235–255). All endeavors to find evidence for a mechanism that would explain a general finality in nature were unsuccessful or, where it occurs in organisms, it was explained strictly causally (see below). As a result, by the time of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s, no competent biologist was left who still believed in any final causation of evolution or of the world as a whole.

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