IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB603354866

The Unfinished Synthesis?: Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology in the 20th Century (2019)

Sepkoski, David Christopher (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 52
Issue: 4
Pages: 687-703

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-018-9537-8

DOI: 10.1007/s10739-018-9537-8

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Modern Synthesis (biology) Scientific communities; interprofessional relations Discipline formation Evolution Paleontology 20th century Simpson, George Gaylord

In the received view of the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, paleontology was given a prominent role in evolutionary biology thanks to the significant influence of paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson on both the institutional and conceptual development of the Synthesis. Simpson's 1944 Tempo and Mode in Evolution is considered a classic of Synthesis-era biology, and Simpson often remarked on the influence of other major Synthesis figures – such as Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky – on his developing thought. Why, then, did paleontologists of the 1970s and 1980s – Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldredge, David M. Raup, Steven Stanley, and others – so frequently complain that paleontology remained marginalized within evolutionary biology? This essay considers three linked questions: first, were paleontologists genuinely welcomed into the Synthetic project during its initial stages? Second, was the initial promise of the role for paleontology realized during the decades between 1950 and 1980, when the Synthesis supposedly "hardened" to an "orthodoxy"? And third, did the period of organized dissent and opposition to this orthodoxy by paleontologists during the 1970s and 1980s bring about a long-delayed completion to the Modern Synthesis, or rather does it highlight the wider failure of any such unified Darwinian evolutionary consensus?

...More

Included in

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

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB603354866/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Cain, Joe; (2002)
Epistemic and Community Transition in American Evolutionary Studies: The “Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics” (1942--1949) (/isis/citation/CBB000202895/)

Article Catalá Gorgues, Jesús I.; (2013)
Miquel Crusafont, George Simpson y la internacionalización de los estudios de paleontología evolutiva en España (/isis/citation/CBB001213576/)

Article David Ceccarelli; (2021)
“The bad habit of wandering”: Morgan, Osborn and the issue of evolutionary causality in genetics and paleontology (/isis/citation/CBB874691467/)

Article Laporte, Léo F.; (2013)
A Novice's Biography of George Gaylord Simpson (/isis/citation/CBB001212344/)

Book Laporte, Léo F.; (2000)
George Gaylord Simpson. Paleontologist and Evolutionist (/isis/citation/CBB000100395/)

Article Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty; (2014)
Disciplining and Popularizing: Evolution and Its Publics from the Modern Synthesis to the Present (/isis/citation/CBB001420093/)

Thesis Paton, Miranda Vierra; (2008)
Vertebrate Paleontology and the Evolutionary Synthesis, 1894--1944 (/isis/citation/CBB001560692/)

Article Anya Plutynski; (2019)
Speciation Post Synthesis: 1960–2000 (/isis/citation/CBB489906012/)

Book Sepkoski, David; (2012)
Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (/isis/citation/CBB001210043/)

Article Marco Tamborini; (2017)
The reception of Darwin in late nineteenth-century German paleontology as a case of pyrrhic victory (/isis/citation/CBB021564496/)

Article Cain, J.; (2004)
Short Notes: Missing Items from Published Bibliographies for George Gaylord Simpson (/isis/citation/CBB000501171/)

Article Ries, C. J.; (2007)
Creating the Proavis: Bird Origins in the Art and Science of Gerhard Heilmann 1913--1926 (/isis/citation/CBB000771957/)

Article H. Meiring; (2021)
Scientific patronage in the age of Darwin: The curious case of William Boyd Dawkins (/isis/citation/CBB464840736/)

Article Maureen A. O’Malley; (2018)
The Experimental Study of Bacterial Evolution and Its Implications for the Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary Biology (/isis/citation/CBB475403283/)

Article Amundson, Ron; (2014)
Charles Darwin's Reputation: How It Changed during the Twentieth-Century and How It May Change Again (/isis/citation/CBB001500032/)

Article Depew, David J.; (2011)
Adaptation as Process: The Future of Darwinism and the Legacy of Theodosius Dobzhansky (/isis/citation/CBB001023991/)

Article Ben Bradley; (2022)
Natural selection according to Darwin: Cause or effect? (/isis/citation/CBB830954057/)

Article Philippe Huneman; (2019)
How the Modern Synthesis Came to Ecology (/isis/citation/CBB692195212/)

Article Yoichi Ishida; (2017)
Sewall Wright, shifting balance theory, and the hardening of the modern synthesis (/isis/citation/CBB492038485/)

Article Emily Herrington; Eva Jablonka; (2020)
Creating a ‘gestalt shift’ in evolutionary science: Roles for metaphor in the conceptual landscape of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) (/isis/citation/CBB255233612/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}