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Article ID: CBB067118452

The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part II: The Synthesis and Since (2019)

Beatty, John H. (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 52
Issue: 4
Pages: 705-731

DOI: 10.1007/s10739-019-09583-4

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-019-09583-4

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Modern Synthesis (biology) Natural selection Evolution Darwinism Controversies and disputes 20th century, early 19th century

This is the second of a two-part essay on the history of debates concerning the creativity of natural selection, from Darwin through the evolutionary synthesis and up to the present. In the first part, I focussed on the mid-late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, with special emphasis on early Darwinism and its critics, the self-styled “mutationists.” The second part focuses on the evolutionary synthesis and some of its critics, especially the “neutralists” and “neo-mutationists.” Like Stephen Gould, I consider the creativity of natural selection to be a key component of what has traditionally counted as “Darwinism.” I argue that the creativity of natural selection is best understood in terms of (1) selection initiating evolutionary change, and (2) selection directing evolutionary change, for example by creating the variation that it subsequently acts upon. I consider the respects in which both of these claims sound non-Darwinian, even though they have long been understood by supporters and critics alike to be virtually constitutive of Darwinism.

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Article Philippe Huneman (2019) Special Issue Editor’s Introduction: “Revisiting the Modern Synthesis”. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 509-518). unapi

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