Neutral Spaces and Topological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology: Lessons from Some Landscapes and Mappings

Philippe Huneman (1)

1 IHPST - Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques

I consider recent uses of the notion of neutrality in evolutionary biology and ecology, questioning their relevance to the kind of explanation recently labeled 'topological expla-nation'. Focusing on fitness landscapes and genotype-phenotype maps, I explore the explanatory uses of neutral subspaces, as modeled in two perspectives: hyperdimensional fitness landscapes and RNA sequence-structure maps. I argue that topological properties of such spaces account for features of evolutionary systems: respectively, capacity for adaptive evolution toward global optima and mutational robustness of genotypes. Thus many models appealing to "neutral" manifolds provide topological alternatives to hypothetical mechanisms.

Domaines: Histoire, Philosophie et Sociologie des sciences; Biodiversité et Ecologie

Philippe Huneman. Neutral Spaces and Topological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology: Lessons from Some Landscapes and Mappings. Philosophy of Science, 2018. ⟨hal-01968457⟩