The Philosophy of Science

Using formal logic, Reconstructing the Past seeks to clarify and resolve themethodological issues that arise when biologists try to answer such questions as whether humanbeings are more closely related to chimps than they are to gorillas. It explores the case forconsidering the philosophical idea of simplicity/parsimony as a useful principle for evaluatingtaxonomic theories of evolutionary relationships. Bringing together philosophy, biology, andstatistics, Sober builds a general framework for understanding the circumstances in which parsimonymakes sense as a tool of phylogenetic inference.Elliott Sober is Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison, and the author of The Nature of Selection.