Laland Kevin N, Odling-Smee John, Hoppitt William, Uller Tobias
School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK.
Biol Philos. 2013;28(5):793-810. doi: 10.1007/s10539-013-9380-4. Epub 2013 May 22.
We are grateful to the commentators for taking the time to respond to our article. Too many interesting and important points have been raised for us to tackle them all in this response, and so in the below we have sought to draw out the major themes. These include problems with both the term 'ultimate causation' and the proximate-ultimate causation dichotomy more generally, clarification of the meaning of reciprocal causation, discussion of issues related to the nature of development and phenotypic plasticity and their roles in evolution, and consideration of the need for an extended evolutionary synthesis.
我们感谢各位评论者花时间对我们的文章做出回应。提出的有趣且重要的观点太多,以至于我们无法在本次回应中一一探讨,因此在下文我们试图梳理出主要主题。这些主题包括“终极因果关系”这一术语以及更一般的近因 - 终极因果二分法存在的问题、相互因果关系含义的阐释、与发育本质和表型可塑性及其在进化中的作用相关问题的讨论,以及对扩展进化综合理论必要性的思考。