Sometimes, scientists disagree. If a disagreement is public and persistent but nevertheless thought to be settleable through more or less standard scientific practices, then such a disagreement is known as a scientific controversy. In a recent paper in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science, KLI Hans Przibram fellow Ludo Schoenmakers examines a particular scientific debate within evolutionary biology: the controversy over a view of evolution called adaptationism. Roughly speaking, adaptationism holds that the evolution of organismal traits is best understood and studied as the result of adaptations to the environment (including other organisms), driven by natural selection. Some evolutionary biologists believe this is true, while others don't. Here, Schoenmakers has attempted to explain what drives the adaptationist controversy. He argues that it is a multifactorial controversy, best understood as a dispute over when evolutionary biologists think they have achieved scientific understanding of evolution. This offers a new perspective on the adaptationist controversy and serves as a proof of concept for analyzing scientific controversies in the biological sciences in terms of scientific understanding.

Publication:

Schoenmakers, L.L.J. Scientific understanding and the controversy over adaptationism in evolutionary biology. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 16, 77 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-026-00788-z