Causes and Consequences of Selection: A Commentary on Baedke and Fábregas-Tejeda

Abstract

In their chapter, Baedke and Fábregas-Tejeda take a historical approach to some of the concepts typically presented as a counter-point to the MS as characterized by EES proponents. Specifically, the authors focus on three EES concepts—a holistic approach to organisms and development, reciprocity in organism-environment relations, and the role of organismal agency in evolution—and trace their origins to a strong, early twentieth century, organismal movement in biological explanation that later declined, especially with the mid-century rise of reductionist molecular biology. They locate the motivations for the crystallization of the organismal movement, which arose in multiple English- and German-speaking scientific communities, in the tensions between vitalism and reductionist materialism around the turn of the twentieth century, even though the antecedents of this perspective on biology go back considerably further in time.