William James distinguishes between tender-minded philosophers and tough-minded philosophers. No one would use tender-minded as a term referring to Aristotle, the first and the best of philosophers to look at biology, but it does seem true that in the millennia succeeding (especially since the scientific revolution) biology has attracted thinkers who do want to find meaning and comfort in the material world and its explanations. Vitalism, holism, and emergentism were the terms commonly favored.
Things started to change significantly about 50 years ago, when a small group of analytically trained philosophers, including David Hull and Michael Ruse, turned their attentions to the biological sciences, determined to bring understanding and rigor to meta-analyses of the life sciences (Ruse 1988). Today, philosophy of biology is one of the strongest and most popular areas of Anglophone philosophy, with related interest in other academic cultures.
For fairly obvious reasons, evolutionary...
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References
Gould SJ, Lewontin RC (1979) The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proc R Soc of Lond Ser B Biol Sci 205:581–598
Pennock R, Ruse M (eds) (2008) But is it science? The philosophical question in the creation/evolution controversy, 2nd edn. Prometheus, Buffalo
Plantinga A (2011) Where the conflict lies: science, religion, and naturalism. Oxford University Press, New York
Ruse M (1988) Philosophy of biology today. SUNY Press, Albany
Ruse M (ed) (2008) The Oxford handbook of the philosophy of biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford
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Ruse, M. (2013). Biology, Philosophy of. In: Gunstone, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Science Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_236-1
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