Abstract
Modern evolutionary biology has been founded by Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin who independently proposed that natural selection was a principle driving force of life on earth. While over a century of research into evolutionary biology has revealed a substantial amount of knowledge on life on earth, the discipline has been mainly informed by Platonic essentialism and biological reductionism. These concepts provide both a limited and insubstantial scope for examining and understanding the interplay between evolution and biology. This paper’s aim is to critically examine the conceptual problems arising from Platonic essentialism and biological reductionism within evolutionary biology. The paper also poses how Platonic essentialism and biological reductionism can be supplanted for more insightful approaches.
Henneberg, M