Health, Biological Fitness and Environmental Diversity. Health is often impaired when evolved biological mechanisms interact with modern environments. But the idea that an ‘ancestral’ lifestyle will m

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Health, Biological Fitness and Environmental Diversity. Health is often impaired when evolved biological mechanisms interact with modern environments. But the idea that an ‘ancestral’ lifestyle will maximise health has been rightly derided as ‘paleofantasy’. Our team includes leaders of two fields that have taken a more productive approach to the impacts of diverse environments on biological fitness and on health: nutritional ecology and the evolutionary anthropology of altitude adaptation. Making explicit the ways in which these fields define reference environments and assess biological fitness will facilitate research on other health impacts of environmental diversity. This interdisciplinary collaboration will demonstrate the value of philosophy in science as opposed to philosophy of science.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5002 - History and Philosophy of Specific Fields. Lead: Dr Pierrick Bourrat