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.
...MoreArticle Philippe Huneman (2019) Special Issue Editor’s Introduction: “Revisiting the Modern Synthesis”. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 509-518).
Similar Citations
Article
Bowler, Peter J.;
(2014)
Francis Galton's Saltationism and the Ambiguities of Selection
(/isis/citation/CBB001421642/)
Article
Alan Grafen;
(2019)
Should we ask for more than consistency of Darwinism with Mendelism?
(/isis/citation/CBB453166142/)
Book
Leeuwenburgh, Bart;
(2009)
Darwin in Domineesland
(/isis/citation/CBB001024341/)
Article
Hall, Brian K.;
(2006)
“Evolutionist and Missionary,” the Reverend John Thomas Gulick (1832--1923). Part I: Cumulative Segregation---Geographical Isolation
(/isis/citation/CBB001230142/)
Book
Jones, Jeannette Eileen;
Sharp, Patrick B.;
(2010)
Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality
(/isis/citation/CBB001033825/)
Article
Hall, Brian K.;
(2006)
“Evolutionist and Missionary,” the Reverend John Thomas Gulick (1832--1923). Part II. Coincident or Ontogenetic Selection---The Baldwin Effect
(/isis/citation/CBB001230143/)
Article
Nash, Richard;
(2015)
William Keith Brooks and the Naturalist's Defense of Darwinism in the Late-Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001510220/)
Thesis
Pearce, Trevor Richard;
(2010)
“A Perfect Chaos”: Organism-Environment Interaction and the Causal Factors of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001562740/)
Article
Ulrich Krohs;
(2022)
Darwin’s empirical claim and the janiform character of fitness proxies
(/isis/citation/CBB424930844/)
Article
Levit, Georgy S.;
Hossfeld, Uwe;
Olsson, Lennart;
(2014)
The Darwinian Revolution in Germany: From Evolutionary Morphology to the Modern Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001500033/)
Book
Zarimis, Maria;
(2015)
Darwin's Footprint: Cultural Perspectives on Evolution in Greece (1880--1930s)
(/isis/citation/CBB001551568/)
Book
Charles H. Pence;
(2021)
The Rise of Chance in Evolutionary Theory: A Pompous Parade of Arithmetic
(/isis/citation/CBB843376661/)
Article
John Beatty;
(2016)
The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part I: Darwin, Darwinism, and the Mutationists
(/isis/citation/CBB866481933/)
Chapter
Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira;
(2010)
Regeneration as a Difficulty for the Theory of Natural Selection: Morgan's Changing Attitudes, 1897--1932
(/isis/citation/CBB001250587/)
Article
Thomas Junker;
(2008)
The Downfall of Civilised Nations in the Light of Biology: Erwin Baur’s Darwinian Doomsday Science (1922/32)
(/isis/citation/CBB119512689/)
Book
Hodge, M. J. S.;
(2008)
Before and after Darwin: Origins, Species, Cosmogonies, and Ontologies
(/isis/citation/CBB000952045/)
Article
Canseco, Juan;
(2006)
Conflitto e confronto: l'evoluzionismo materialista di Darwin e l'evoluzionismo spiritualista di Wallace
(/isis/citation/CBB001221434/)
Article
de Andrade Martins, Roberto;
(2012)
A origem dos pombos domésticos na estratégia argumentativa de Charles Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB001212027/)
Chapter
Ruse, Michael;
(2002)
The Prematurity of Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection
(/isis/citation/CBB000202426/)
Book
Stott, Rebecca;
(2003)
Darwin and the Barnacle
(/isis/citation/CBB000320242/)
Be the first to comment!