ABSTRACT
This chapter makes the case that the professional philosophy of biology developed in the 1970s was designed to only be a philosophy of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (MES). Mobilizing Winther’s cartographic philosophy of science, the chapter argues that—with philosophers of biology’s help—the gene-centric map of biology drafted by proponents of the MES became identified with the terrain of biology itself. The chapter argues that this not only foreclosed wider considerations of the nature of biological evolution, but also forced methodologically diverse subdisciplines in biology to fit their own work into the framework of the MES or risk being excluded as theoretically irrelevant. The chapter also sketches means by which philosophers of biology can help alleviate such conflations of map and territory, and how certain philosophical exercises can prevent uncritical conflations in the future.
