Functions 539repertoire. Hence I am sceptical of whether an account of biological function
that seeks to do justice to the practice of evolutionary biology needs to respect
malfunction claims, and I am equally sceptical of the credit we should give to
the SE account for doing so. The idea that malfunction claims are an important
part of the practice of evolutionary biology is best understood as a hangover from
natural theology. Once we eliminate the need for an account of biological function
to respect malfunction claims, we begin to downplay the seriousness of heavy
function talk within biology, and we can view evolutionary function claims as
parts of the functional analyses of populations.
6 GOAL-DIRECTEDNESSI have tried to argue that part of the appeal of the SE theory comes from the fact
that it appears to meet a number of desiderata for an account of functions, which
are themselves shaped by the fact that modern evolutionary biology inherits an
artefact model of organisms from natural theology. We must remember that this is
not the only way to approach the organic world. Indeed, instead of an immediate
focus on how to explain the good tools adult organisms have for jobs demanded
by the environment, other biologists have instead been struck primarily by the
extraordinary phenomena of organic development, maintenance and reproduction.
They have been struck, that is, by the phenomena of an organism coming to be, to
persist, and to reproduce over the period of time between conception and death.
In many cases theorists have taken the ability of organisms to survive in spite
of perturbations in their environments as definitive of life itself. Sommerhof’s
introductory remarks have been influential here:
On the phenomenal level from which all science must proceed, life is
nothing if not just this manifestation of apparent purposiveness and
organic order in material systems. In the last analysis, the beast is
not distinguishable from its dung save by the end-serving and inte-
grating activities which unite it into an ordered, self-regulating and
single whole, and impart to the individual whole that unique inde-
pendence from the vicissitudes of the environment and that unique
power to hold its own by making internal adjustments, which all living
organisms possess in some degree. [Sommerhof, 1950, 6]Sommerhof is here characterising whole organisms as directed towards certain
goals. Parts of organisms are functional or purposive in so far as they contribute
towards those goals. These goal-directed accounts appeals to what I earlier called
the agent-model of functions: the appropriate way to understand organic functions
is by analogy with an agent who aims at some target. The obvious goals to posit
for organisms are those of attainment and then maintenance of the capacity to
reproduce. Just as an agent’s target can explain what the agent is doing (he is
going to the shops because he is trying to get bread), so the goal-directed account