Since its origin in the early 20th century, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution has grown to become the orthodox view on the process of organic evolution. Its central defining feature is the prominence it accords to genes in the explanation of evolutionary dynamics. Since the advent ofthe 21st century, however, the Modern Synthesis has been subject to repeated and sustained challenges. These are largely empirically driven. In the last two decades, evolutionary biology has witnessed unprecedented growth in the understanding of those processes that underwrite the development oforganisms and the inheritance of characters. The empirical advances usher in challenges to the conceptual foundations of evolutionary theory. The extent to which the new biology challenges the Modern Synthesis has been the subject of lively debate. Many current commentators charge that the newbiology of the 21st century calls for a revision, extension, or wholesale rejection of the Modern Synthesis Theory of evolution. Defenders of the Modern Synthesis maintain that the theory can accommodate the exciting new advances in biology. The original essays collected in this volume survey thevarious challenges to the Modern Synthesis arising from the new biology of the 21st century. The authors are evolutionary biologists, philosophers of science, and historians of biology from Europe and North America. Each of the essays discusses a particular challenge to the Modern Synthesistreatment of inheritance, development, or adaptation. Taken together, the essays cover a spectrum of views, from those that contend that the Modern Synthesis can rise to the challenges of the new biology, with little or no revision required, to those that call for the abandonment of the ModernSynthesis. The collection will be of interest to researchers and students in evolutionary biology, and the philosophy and history of the biological sciences.
...MoreReview Karen Kovaka (2019) Review of "Challenging the Modern Synthesis: Adaptation, Development, and Inheritance". Metascience: An International Review Journal for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (pp. 289-291).
Similar Citations
Article
Alexis De Tiège;
Yves Van de Peer;
Johan Braeckman;
Koen B. Tanghe;
(2017)
The Sociobiology of Genes: The Gene’s Eye View as a Unifying Behavioural-Ecological Framework for Biological Evolution
Book
D. M. Walsh;
(2015)
Organisms, Agency, and Evolution
Article
Cameron Brinitzer;
(2024)
Historicizing the liberal antiracism of Cultural Evolution
Article
Jonathan B. L. Bard;
(2017)
C.H. Waddington’s Differences with the Creators of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis: A Tale of Two Genes
Article
Erik L. Peterson;
(2017)
‘So Far Like the Present Period’: A Reply to ‘C.H. Waddington’s Differences with the Creators of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis: A Tale of Two Genes’
Article
John Beatty;
(2019)
The Creativity of Natural Selection? Part II: The Synthesis and Since
Article
Alison Bashford;
(2025)
The New Modern Synthesis: E. O. Wilson and Julian Huxley
Article
Tiago Rama;
(2024)
The historical transformation of individual concepts into populational ones: an explanatory shift in the gestation of the modern synthesis
Article
Boudry, Maarten;
Blancke, Stefaan;
Braeckman, Johan;
(2012)
Grist to the Mill of Anti-Evolutionism: The Failed Strategy of Ruling the Supernatural Out of Science by Philosophical Fiat
Thesis
Christopher W. Howell;
(2021)
Designer Science: A History of Intelligent Design in America
Article
Ben Bradley;
(2022)
Natural selection according to Darwin: Cause or effect?
Article
Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty;
(2014)
Disciplining and Popularizing: Evolution and Its Publics from the Modern Synthesis to the Present
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)
Book
Stuart Mathieson;
(2020)
Evangelicals and the Philosophy of Science: The Victoria Institute, 1865-1939
Article
Dietrich, Michael R.;
Skipper, Robert A., Jr.;
(2007)
Manipulating Underdetermination in Scientific Controversy: The Case of the Molecular Clock
Book
Cosans, Christopher E.;
(2009)
Owen's Ape and Darwin's Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism
Book
Towne, Margaret Gray;
(2003)
Honest to Genesis
Article
Lucas J. Matthews;
(2016)
On closing the gap between philosophical concepts and their usage in scientific practice: A lesson from the debate about natural selection as mechanism
Book
Bayertz, Kurt;
Gerhard, Myriam;
Jaeschke, Walter;
(2007)
Weltanschauung, Philosophie und Naturwissenschaft im 19. Jahrhundert
Thesis
Devin Susanne Yagel Gouvêa;
(2021)
Essentially Dynamic Concepts and the Case of "Homology"
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
Journal of the History of Biology
Perspectives on Science
Be the first to comment!