Nagel, Thomas. “The major teleological transitions in evolution: why the materialistic evolutionary conception of nature is almost certainly right.” (2013): 177-205.
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In his recent book, Thomas Nagel argues that our ideas about the entities that constitute the world, and our notions of the evolution of biological entities, are inadequate. Nagel regards himself as a diagnostician, not a healer: he diagnoses what he regards as the deep problems of the current scientific world-view and leaves the healing — the solutions — to future scientists. This position allows him to be very vague about what the future solutions may entail. Nevertheless, if his analysis is valid, it can still be an important contribution to our scientific world-view. In this review-essay we argue that although Nagel points to great challenges that evolutionary biologists must (and do) address, his diagnosis is faulty and the validity of his conclusions is therefore doubtful. Before we present our critique, a short summary of Nagel’s principal arguments is necessary