The fitness landscape metaphor: Dead but not gone

Abstract

In this paper I present a semantic approach to the analysis of the function of the landscape metaphor within evolutionary biology. The concept of adaptive landscape has drawn a considerable attention in recent philosophy of biology. Most writers have treated the concept in one of the following ways: as a heuristic tool, as an intrinsic part of robustly defined mathematical models, or as a definable set of analogies on which models are based and tested. All these views lead to the conclusion that the value of the landscape metaphor depends only on the success of the models, which the metaphor underlies, to adequately represent evolutionary dynamics. I have tried to show that this conclusion, and respectively, the views which imply it, do not account for important episodes from the history of the landscape metaphor. These views rather stem from the general views, in philosophy of science, about the role of metaphors in scientific theories. The semantic analysis which I propose reveals that the concept of adaptive reliefs' primary function during the evolutionary synthesis has been to serve as a general unifying conceptual framework which has made possible the theoretical reconciliation of heterogeneous empirical phenomena. From this perspective, the landscape metaphor is a linguistictheoretical tool which should not be abandoned (and in fact has not been abandoned) after the falsification of the models which have been built and interpreted by means of the metaphor.