[Revised entry by Elisabeth Lloyd on June 12, 2024.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
The theory of evolution by natural selection is, perhaps, the crowning intellectual achievement of the biological sciences. There is considerable debate, though, about which entities are selected in an evolutionary process. This article aims to clarify these debates by identifying four distinct, though often confused, theoretical and empirical research questions, as well as two schools of multilevel genetics; the debates themselves are clarified by highlighting which of these four research questions, or their combinations, are central…

Originally appeared on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Read More