Parsimony and the Fisher–Wright debate |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Anya?PlutynskiEmail author |
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Institution: | (1) University of Utah, 260 Central Campus Drive, Room 341, 84112 OSH, Salt Lake City, UT, USA |
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Abstract: | In the past five years, there have been a series of papers in the journal Evolution debating the relative significance of two theories of evolution, a neo-Fisherian and a neo-Wrightian theory, where the neo-Fisherians
make explicit appeal to parsimony. My aim in this paper is to determine how we can make sense of such an appeal. One interpretation
of parsimony takes it that a theory that contains fewer entities or processes, (however we demarcate these) is more parsimonious.
On the account that I defend here, parsimony is a ‘local’ virtue. Scientists’ appeals to parsimony are not necessarily an
appeal to a theory’s simplicity in the sense of it’s positing fewer mechanisms. Rather, parsimony may be proxy for greater
probability or likelihood. I argue that the neo-Fisherians appeal is best understood on this interpretation. And indeed, if
we interpret parsimony as either prior probability or likelihood, then we can make better sense of Coyne et al. argument that
Wright’s three phase process operates relatively infrequently. |
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Keywords: | Bayes’ theorem Density dependence Epistasis Genetic drift Likelihood Parsimony Probability Ronald Fisher Shifting balance Sewall Wright |
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