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The studies of evolutionary biology and of human history face the same kinds of problems and deal with the same processes. Both disciplines deal with similar questions in similar ways, but do the methods used produce comparable knowledge, and are the differences and similarities between these disciplines real?
This book examines the philosophy of historical and evolutionary studies; the objectivity and meanings of human and evolutionary histories; the evolutionary approaches to and the anlysis of history, historical approaches, and utilization of evolution; the logic of historical and evolutionary thinking and explanations; the identification of similarities, differences, and common problems of evolutionary biology and history; and what constitutes the major historical and evolutionary events.
Matthew H. Nitecki is Curator and Doris V. Nitecki is Associate Curator in the Department of Geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
History: La Grande Illusion
Matthew H. Nitecki
Methodologies of Historical Explanations
The Structure of Narrative Explanation in History and Biology
Robert J. Richards
What's so Special About the Past?
Rachel Laudan
The Particular-Circumstance Model of Scientific Explanation
David L. Hull
The Historical Nature of Evolutionary Theory
Marc Ereshefsky
Historical Explanations and Evolutionary Biology
History and Evolutionary Processes
Douglas J. Futuyma
The Conditions for a Nomothetic Paleontology
David B. Kitts
Historical Science and Philosophy of History
A Threefold Parallelism for our Time? Progressive Development in Society, Science, and the Organic World
Michael Ruse
How Microevolutionary Processes Give Rise to History
Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson
Evolution and History: History as Science and Science as History
Garland E. Allen
Evolution of Scientific Theories and the Tension in Ecology
Lawrence B. Slobodkin
Contributors
Index
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