==================== HES POSTING ===================== What I find odd about Phil's project are (a) his project seems to leave out of the picture Michael Ghiselin's Darwinian attack on traditional ecology and (neo-classical style) conceptual realist 'explanatory' efforts in mathematical population genetics; and (b) his grouping of theorists who provide models of Darwinian fitness optimization as the 'single scale of utility' with those in the more properly ecological tradition who who seek to model the flow of 'energy'. I am not a student of either ecology or the history of ecology, so perhaps this a failure on my part to identify a standard identity in the literature. Reference: Michael Ghiselin, _The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex_, Los Angeles: U. of California Press, 1974. Greg Ransom Dept. of Philosophy UC-Riverside [log in to unmask] http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/ransom.htm ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]