The subject as cause and effect of evolution

Abstract

A family of arguments often presented in opposition to mainstream neo-Darwinian views of evolution assert an ‘active' role for organisms in determining the course of their evolution and other kinds of biological change. I assess several of these arguments, beginning with an early treatment by Lewontin and moving to more recent discussions. I then look at a subset of these phenomena, those in which organisms are efficacious in virtue of features and capacities related to subjectivity . In the history of the Earth from the Cambrian onwards, subjectivity has been an increasingly important causal factor.