History and Philosophy of Biology—Mayr’s Third Synthesis

Abstract

During the last quarter of his life, Ernst Mayr contributed importantly to the fields of history and philosophy of biology based on his previous work in systematic and evolutionary biology. The titles of his major books documenting these contributions are The Growth of Biological Thought (1982d), Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Observations of an Evolutionist (1988e), This is Biology. The Science of the Living World (1997b), and What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (2004a). With these accomplishments he became a foremost historian of biology and one of the leaders of a modern philosophy of biology. According to Mayr in biological science, especially evolutionary biology, most major progress is made by the introduction of new concepts like the concepts of natural selection, geographical variation and isolating mechanisms rather than new facts or discoveries. This illustrated for him that biology differs in several important ways from the physical sciences. In biology probabilistic generalizations, “rules” and concepts exist rather than laws as in the physical sciences which are dominated by essentialistic philosophy. In biology population thinking is all-important emphasizing the uniqueness of individuals. Other characteristics of living organisms are complexity and organization, the possession of a genetic program, and their historical nature. Since the late 19th century biology, for Mayr, struggled to become autonomous and independent from the physicalist approaches.