Adaptation and Evolutionary Theory

The conception of adaptation was not introduced into biology in 1859, Rather what Darwin did was to offer a radically new type of explanation of adaptations and in so doing he altered the conception. As the above quotes indicate we have not in the last century sufficiently delimited this conception and it is important to do so. In this paper we will analyse and, I hope, clarify one aspect of the conception of adaptation. One of the aims of this paper is a theoretically adequate definition of relative adaptedness. As we will see such analysis cannot be divorced from an analysis of the structure of evolutionary theory. The other major aim of this paper is to expose this structure, to show how it differs from the standard philosophical models of scientific theories, and to defend this differentiating feature (and hence to show the inadequacy of certain views about the structure of scientific theories which purport to be con~plete).