Richard G. Delisle, Expanding the Framework of the Holism/Reductionism Debate in Neo-Darwinism: The Case of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Bernhard Rensch

The holism/reductionism debate in evolutionary biology has often been analysed as involving two main phenomenological levels within neo-Darwinism: genetic and organismic. This analytical framework assumes that explanation in evolution is either found in the field of genetics or the field of organismic biology. It is argued here that this framework is far too restrictive to incorporate what at least some founding members of neo- Darwinism had in mind in their search for the ultimate cause of evolution. Dobzhansky’s “super-holism” locates this drive in the highest possible entity imaginable – an ontologically unified evolutionary cosmos – while Rensch’s ontological “super-reductionism,” on the other hand, places it at the lowest possible entity of microphysics, that is, at the level of an energetic field of protopsychical nature. Not only it is suggested that a much-expanded framework is required for analysing the holism/reductionism debate in neo-Darwinism, but also that this new framework may have implications for the conceptualization of the neo- Darwinian movement itself.

Cosmic evolution; Theodosius Dobzhansky; Downward causation; Holism; neo-Darwinism; Ontology; Panpsychism; Reductionism; Bernhard Rensch; Upward causation.