Book ID: CBB617122717

Challenging the Modern Synthesis: Adaptation, Development, and Inheritance (2017)

unapi

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.

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Reviewed By

Review 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). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB617122717/

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Authors & Contributors
Braeckman, Johan
Bard, Jonathan B. L.
Bashford, Alison
Bayertz, Kurt
Beatty, John H.
Blancke, Stefaan
Journals
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
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
Publishers
University of Chicago
Cambridge University Press
Duke University
Indiana University Press
Meiner
PublishAmerica
Concepts
Evolution
Controversies and disputes
Philosophy of science
Modern Synthesis (biology)
Natural selection
Science and religion
People
Darwin, Charles Robert
Waddington, Conrad Hal
Bard, Jonathan B. L.
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Owen, Richard
Huxley, Julian Sorell
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
Places
United States
London (England)
Institutions
Victoria Institute
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