CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Sober (1984) proposes to consider evolutionary theory as a theory of forces ? in analogy with classical mechanics. According to him: "A theory of forces begins with a claim about what will happen to a system when no forces act on it. The theory then specifies what effects each possible force will have when it acts alone. Then the theory progress to a treatment of the pairwise effects of forces, then to triplets, and so on, until all possible forces treated by the theory are taken into account. Since most objects in the real world are bombarded by a multiplicity of forces, this increase in complexity brings with it an increase in realism. A theory must discover how to combine the forces it describes." (Sober 1984, p. 31) Besides: "A theory of forces must contain both source laws and consequences laws. The former describe the circumstances that produce forces; the latter describe how forces, once they exist, produce changes in the systems they impinge upon. The classical law of gravitation is a source law [...]. Source laws describe the physical circumstances that generate particular kinds of forces. A "consequence law," as the name suggests, describes what follows from the presence or absence of forces. "F = ma" is the classical example." (Sober 1984, p. 50) And, in particular: "The zero-force state in evolutionary theory is specified by the Hardy-Weinberg law of population genetics" (Sober 1984, p. 50). The Hardy-Weinberg law, which is a central law of (classical) population genetics "it is a simplified "(mathematical) model" (the simplest case in classical population genetics) - is "foundational" in population genetics (Sober 1984, p. 36). The aim of this communication is to discuss Sober´s position and to propose an alternative analysis of the Hardy-Weinerg law within a structuralist reconstruction of classical population genetics.

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