The aim of philosophy of biology is to use the conceptual tools of
philosophy to better understand the enterprise of building our
scientific knowledge of living organisms, and their processes,
groupings, and development.  More specifically, the goals of philosophy
of biology are to identify and attempt to address fundamental conceptual
puzzles of the biological sciences, assess the place of the biological
sciences among the other sciences, and examine the nature of their
constituent scientific methods and practices.  

Our focus is on the conceptual foundations of biology. What is the nature
of biological explanation--whether in evolutionary, molecular, or ecological
biology--and what counts as evidence on behalf of such explanatory
accounts?  What are the basic concepts of analysis that biologists refer to
in their theories of species, organisms, genes, populations, niches,
etc.? What is our best grasp of such concepts?  How are we to best
understand such phenomena as selection, fitness, adaptation, function,
and self-organization?  Are there laws in biology? Are the theories
of biology reducible to the theories of physics and chemistry?  Are
there natural kinds in biology?

In our exploration of the nature of biology, the sorts of questions we
will pose and the issues we will explore generally emerge from two
corners of philosophy:  metaphysics and epistemology. 

On the metaphysics side, we seek to understand such matters as the
kinds of things that exist; the conditions for their identity and causal
relations; and the best way to conceive of the groupings into which they
fall. 

On the epistemology side, we seek to understand such matters as
(a) how and why our knowledge of the biological world may be structured
(e.g. into empirical data, claims about those data, or subsuming data
under theories); (b) the nature of justification and evidence, (c)
explanation in knowledge concerning the biological, and (d) the relation
of biological theories to other theories in the sciences.

The books we will use are:

1. Elliott Sober (ed.), Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, 3rd
edition, Cambridge:  MIT Press, 2006.  ISBN-13: 9780262693387

2. Frank B. Golley and David R. Keller (eds.), Science of Synthesis:  An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Ecology, University of Georgia Press,
2000.  ISBN-13: 9780820322209