Prospective evolutionary theory: fitness, selection, and genetic drift. Philosophical and historical perspective.

Discussions of evolutionary theory are saturated with references to 'chance'. esereferences appear in areas as diverse as macroevolution (Conway Morris, ó É; Desjardins, ó ÕÕ), mutation (Stamos, ó Õ; Dietrich, ó ä; Merlin, ó Õ ), foraging theory (Glymour, ó Õ), and environmental variation (Lenormand et al., ó É). As philosophers of science, how can we come to terms with this diversity of usage of what is widely recognized to be anextremely dicult and thorny concept, rife with philosophical issues? We should begin bysurveying the landscape of contemporary work on chance within the philosophy of biology