A critical review of the statisticalist debate

Over the past decade philosophers of biology have discussed whether evolutionary theory is a causal theory or a phenomenological study of evolution based solely on the statistical features of a population. This article reviews this controversy from three aspects, respectively concerning the assumptions, applications, and explanations of evolutionary theory, with a view to arriving at a definite conclusion in each contention. In so doing I also argue that an implicit methodological assumption shared by both sides of the debate, namely the overconfidence in conceptual analysis as a tool to understand the scientific theory, is the real culprit that has both generated the problem and precluded its solution for such a long time.