A THIRD WAY TO THE SELECTED EFFECT/CAUSAL ROLE DISTINCTION IN THE GREAT ENCODE DEBATE

Since the ENCODE project pub-lished its final results in a series of articles in 2012, there is no consensus on what its implications are. ENCODE’s central and most contro-versial claim was that there is essentially no junk DNA: most sections of the human genome be-lieved to be «junk» are functional. This claim was met with many reservations. If researchers disagree about whether there is junk DNA, they have first to agree on a concept of function and how function, given a particular definition, can be discovered. The ENCODE debate centered on a notion of function that assumes a strong dichotomy between evolutionary and non-evol-utionary function and causes, prevalent in the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. In contrast to how the debate is typically portrayed, both sides share a commitment to this distinction. This dis-tinction is, however, much debated in alternative approaches to evolutionary theory, such as the EES. We show that because the ENCODE debate is grounded in a particular notion of function, it is unclear how it connects to broader debates about what is the correct evolutionary frame-work. Furthermore, we show how arguments brought forward in the controversy, particularly arguments from mathematical population gen-etics, are deeply embedded in their particular dis-ciplinary contexts, and reflect substantive assumptions about the evolution of genomes. With this article, we aim to provide an anatomy of the ENCODE debate that offers a new perspective on the notions of function both sides employed, as well as to situate the ENCODE debate within wider debates regarding the forces operating in evolution.