| Sumario: | In this paper, I argue (contra some recent philosophical work) that an objective distinction between natural selection and drift be drawn. I draw this distinction by conceiving of drift, in the most fundamental sense, as an individual-level phenomenon. This goes against some other attempts to distinguish selection from drift, which have argued either that drift is a population-level or that it is a population-level . Instead of identifying drift with population-level features, the account introduced here can explain these population-level features based on a property that I label driftability. Additionally, this account shows that biology’s “first law”—the Principle of Drift (Brandon, J Phil 102(7):319–335 2006 )—is not a foundational law, but is a consequence of driftability.
|
|---|