engleski

Natural Selection: Pathway or Mechanism? Insights from Cancer Research

In this paper, within the debate on the nature of natural selection, we examine causal approaches, that is, the new mechanistic accounts and the pathway concept. The mechanistic account has advanced both positive and negative assessments whether the mechanism concepts ‘get at’ the nature of natural selection. However, apart from only a few accounts that characterize natural selection along the lines of the main mechanism concepts, other accounts have mostly been cautious or, even, skeptical about such full-fledged mechanistic characterizations (for the skeptics, see, e.g., Havstad 2011 ; Garson 2021). Thus, contrary to some other areas of biological research, molecular biology to a highest degree, evolutionary biology appears to be out of a direct mechanistic reach. We examine the abovementioned negative assessments and propose a new perspective on the nature of natural selection by considering a current resurgence of interest in causal pathways. The causal pathway concept, as described by Ross (2021: 137): “refers to a sequence of causal steps that string together an upstream cause to a set of causal intermediates to some downstream outcome” (e.g., gene expression pathways, cell-signaling pathways, metabolic pathways, ecological pathways, and developmental pathways). Interestingly, Ross’ corresponding account does not address the causal pathway concept in evolutionary biology, meanwhile, as noted above, elaborates on all the other major biological disciplines. In the present paper, we examine the applicability of the causal pathway concept to the way in which natural selection is at work. In addition, we confront that causal pattern to the mechanism patterns that have been advanced for the nature of natural selection. We further test the applicability under consideration by taking into account the research area of ‘cancer as a micro- evolutionary process’. In other words, selection is present in 2 carcinogenesis once mutations to cancer cells (or proto-cancer cells) are heritable and make a difference to the relative success of cells, more specifically, cell lineages (see Plutynski 2018: 167). Despite some disputes about the extent of dissimilarities between that area and evolutionary considerations referring to individual organisms in a more standard sense, we argue in favor of the suitability of this case study in ‘getting at’ the nature of natural selection for the following reasons: (1) the accessibility of evidence with regard to natural selection, in this case, the population dynamics of independent cancer cells and their cell lineages ; and (2) a specific coexistence of the mechanistic, pathway and other arrangements, as shown by the research area in question.

Natural Selection ; Pathway ; Mechanism ; Cancer Research

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