What is the Status of the Hardy-Weinberg Law within Population Genetics?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to further develop van Fraassen's diagnosis, expanding a previous analysis of the fundamental law of classical genetics and the status of the so-called "Mendel's laws". According to this diagnosis the Hardy-Weinberg law: 1) cannot be considered as axiom (or fundamental law) for classical population genetics, since it is a law that describes an equilibrium that 2) holds only under certain special conditions, and 3) only determines a subclass of models, 4) whose generalized form (and fundamental law) being shading off into logical vacuity, and 5) more complex variants of the fundamental law (and of the Hardy-Weinberg law) can be "deduced" for more realistic assumptions.