ABSTRACT
Evolutionary biology is still today conceived of as an essentially historical science devoted to understanding ultimate causes. This chapter considers responses to both the metaphysical and epistemological questions. It briefly lays out some of the central metaphysical features of mechanisms as they have been characterized in recent literature. The chapter examines whether these features of mechanisms are aptly understood as being instantiated by three of the primary causal drivers of evolution: natural selection, drift, and mutation. It also expounds a few of the strategic roles played by mechanistic thinking and hint at the ways they might apply to the field of evolutionary biology regardless of whether there turn out to be any mechanisms driving evolution. The chapter concludes that–on at least some philosophical characterizations of mechanisms, and with regard to at least some of the central processes of evolutionary biology–there is room for affirmative answers to both the metaphysical and epistemological questions.
