Adaptation and Environment (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Brandon, Robert N.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069108548X ISBN 13: 9780691085487

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1990

Synopsis

By focusing on the crucial role of environment in the process of adaptation, Robert Brandon clarifies definitions and principles so as to help make the argument of evolution by natural selection empirically testable. He proposes that natural selection is the process of differential reproduction resulting from differential adaptedness to a common selective environment.

Originally published in 1990.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Brandon is Professor of Philosophy and Biology at Duke University and the coeditor of "Genes, Organisms, Populations: Controversies over the Units of Selection" (MIT Press, 1984).

Review

"Winner of the 1996 Award for Excellence in Design and Production in Professional/Scholarly Publishing, Association of American Publishers"

"Brandon's book is useful because it focuses on natural selection and adaptation, two concepts central to evolutionary and ecologic studies.... He is genuinely interested in how these concepts can be used to understand evolution, and, more importantly, explain the phenomena we observe in our organisms." (American Journal of Physical Anthropology)

"Throughout this book, Brandon sustains an in-depth reflection on the concepts associated with this fundamental theory of evolutionary biology.... Brandon thus gives to the principle of natural selection a universal explanatory power, insisting on the fact that even if they give the impression of answering teleological questions, the different stages of the `adaptationist explanation' turn up nothing but mechanist processes."---L. Granjon, Mammalia

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 069108548X
• ISBN 13: 9780691085487
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232