NDPR Elliott Sober The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory: Concepts, Inferences, and Probabilities

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2025.09.9 View this Review Online View Other NDPR Reviews

Elliott Sober, The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory: Concepts, Inferences, and Probabilities, Cambridge University Press, 2024, 257pp., $26.99 (pbk) $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781009376013.

Reviewed by Christopher H. Pearson, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

For over 4 decades, Elliott Sober has been examining and illuminating philosophical aspects of evolutionary theory. His recent book, The Philosophy of Evolutionary Theory, is something of a culmination of his extensive contributions to philosophers’ and biologists’ thinking about evolution. In this review, my aim is not so much to engage positions and lines of argument Sober introduces in the book, since the vast majority of that material has seen philosophical scrutiny already; rather, my aim is to (1) give readers a good sense of what to expect from the text and (2) offer some suggestions about how the book might...