The subject as cause and effect of evolution

Abstract

A family of arguments often presented in opposition to mainstream neo-Darwinian views of evolution assert an ‘active’ role for organisms in determining the course of their evolution and other kinds of biological change. I assess several of these arguments, beginning with an early treatment by Lewontin and moving to more recent discussions. I then look at a subset of these phenomena, those in which organisms are efficacious in virtue of features and capacities related to subjectivity. In the history of the Earth from the Cambrian onwards, subjectivity has been an increasingly important causal factor.