A History of Evolutionary Theory The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives in the Unification of Biology Ernst Mayr William B. Provine

BioScience ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 351-351
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Ayala
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
History Of

Revising Plants, man and life: Edgar Anderson reshapes a classic book

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kleinman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Scientific Attention ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Jesup Lectures

On at least four occasions, Edgar Anderson (1897–1969) began revising his book Plants, man and life (1952). Given both its place in Anderson's career and his place in the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century, the emendations are noteworthy. Though a popular work, Plants, man and life served as the distillation of Anderson's ideas on hybridization as an evolutionary mechanism, the need for more scientific attention on domesticated and semi-domesticated plants, and the opportunities such plants provided for the study of evolution. Anderson was an active participant in several key events in what historians have come to call the Evolutionary Synthesis. For example, he and Ernst Mayr shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the origin of species”. Anderson's proposed revisions to his book reflect both an attempt to soften certain acerbic comments as well as an attempt to recast the book as a whole.

The Modern Synthesis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Biological Diversity ◽  
Evolutionary Genetics ◽  
Modern Synthesis ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Synthetic View

The “modern synthesis” generally refers to the early to mid-century formulation of evolutionary theory that reconciled classical Darwinian selection theory with a newer population-oriented view of Mendelian genetics that attempted to explain the origin of biological diversity. It draws on the title of zoologist Julian S. Huxley’s book of 1943 titled Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, a semi-popular account of evolution that ushered in this “modern” synthetic view of evolution. Covering an interval of time approximately between 1920–1950, it also refers to developments in understanding evolution that drew on a range of disciplines that were synthesized or brought to consensus that generally include systematics, paleontology, and botany with a populational view of evolutionary genetics. Whether or not it served to unify the study of evolution, or to unify the disparate biological sciences—and whether or not it led to the emergence of a science of evolutionary biology, as some of its proponents have claimed—remains a topic for discussion. Though they do not refer to precisely the same things or share identical meanings, the phrase “modern synthesis” has overlapped with terms such as the “evolutionary synthesis,” coined and used especially by Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine, to refer to the historical event, as well as terms such as Neo-Darwinian theory or Neo-Darwinism (though criticism has been made regarding the latter term’s applicability to the mid-century developments in evolutionary theory). As Ernst Mayr noted, the term “Neo-Darwinism” was first coined and used by George John Romanes in 1895 to refer to a revision of Charles Darwin’s theory first formulated in 1859, which included Lamarckian inheritance. The extent to which the modern synthesis, and the evolutionary synthesis map with what is also called the synthetic theory, is open for discussion as is specific understanding of the term. For the most part, there is little in the way of consensus or agreement by scientists, philosophers, and historians as to what “the synthesis” (the abbreviated reference) precisely means, and what (if anything) specifically occurred of a general nature in studies of evolution, broadly construed, in the interval of time between 1920–1950.

Toward a Nonidealist Evolutionary Synthesis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart A. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Evolution Of Development ◽  
Search Process ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
Material Systems ◽  
Modern Physics

The received model of evolution sees all inherited features resulting from deterministic networks of interacting genes, implying that living systems are reducible to information in genetic programs. The model requires these programs and their associated phenotypes to have evolved by an isotropic search process occurring in gradual steps with no preferred morphological outcomes. The alternative is to recognize that clusters and aggregates of cells, the raw material of evolution, constitute middle-scale material systems. This implies the necessity of bringing the modern physics of mesoscale matter into the explanatory framework for the evolution of development. The relevant, often nonlinear, physical processes were mobilized at the inception of the phyla when their signature morphological outcomes first appeared and remain as efficient causes, albeit transformed, in present-day embryos. This physicogenetic perspective reengages with concepts of saltation, orthogenesis, and environment-induced plasticity long excluded from evolutionary theory.

Missing Links in the History of Life

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 97-118
Author(s):  
Charles R. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Species

Ever since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution (or more correctly, theories; see Mayr, 1991) it has been assumed that intermediates now extinct once existed between living species. For some, the hunt for these so-called missing links in the fossil record became an obsession, a search for evidence thought needed to establish the veracity of evolutionary theory. Few modern paleontologists, however, search explicitly for ancestors in the fossil record because we now know that fossils can be used to chart the order of evolution regardless of whether they are directly ancestral either to extinct organisms or to those living today.

scholarly journals Evolutionary biology today and the call for an extended synthesis

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 20160145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas J. Futuyma
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Epigenetic Inheritance ◽  
Reaction Norm ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Extended Synthesis ◽  
Proximate Causation

Evolutionary theory has been extended almost continually since the evolutionary synthesis (ES), but except for the much greater importance afforded genetic drift, the principal tenets of the ES have been strongly supported. Adaptations are attributable to the sorting of genetic variation by natural selection, which remains the only known cause of increase in fitness. Mutations are not adaptively directed, but as principal authors of the ES recognized, the material (structural) bases of biochemistry and development affect the variety of phenotypic variations that arise by mutation and recombination. Against this historical background, I analyse major propositions in the movement for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’. ‘Niche construction' is a new label for a wide variety of well-known phenomena, many of which have been extensively studied, but (as with every topic in evolutionary biology) some aspects may have been understudied. There is no reason to consider it a neglected ‘process’ of evolution. The proposition that phenotypic plasticity may engender new adaptive phenotypes that are later genetically assimilated or accommodated is theoretically plausible; it may be most likely when the new phenotype is not truly novel, but is instead a slight extension of a reaction norm already shaped by natural selection in similar environments. However, evolution in new environments often compensates for maladaptive plastic phenotypic responses. The union of population genetic theory with mechanistic understanding of developmental processes enables more complete understanding by joining ultimate and proximate causation; but the latter does not replace or invalidate the former. Newly discovered molecular phenomena have been easily accommodated in the past by elaborating orthodox evolutionary theory, and it appears that the same holds today for phenomena such as epigenetic inheritance. In several of these areas, empirical evidence is needed to evaluate enthusiastic speculation. Evolutionary theory will continue to be extended, but there is no sign that it requires emendation.

An Entangled Bank

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc W. Cadotte ◽  
T. Jonathan Davies
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Community Assembly ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Neutral Theory ◽  
Species Distributions ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Carl Linnaeus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Neutral Theory Of Biodiversity ◽  
Diversity Of Life

This chapter reviews the history of the use of phylogenetics in ecology, beginning with a discussion of early attempts to classify the diversity of life and the development of evolutionary theory. In particular, it examines how early taxonomists, starting with Carl Linnaeus, have grouped species by similarity in their traits and how early ecologists and biologists such as Charles Darwin recognized the importance of relatedness in influencing ecological interactions and species distributions. The chapter proceeds by focusing on the introduction of the neutral theory of biodiversity into mainstream ecology and the development of the niche-based model of community assembly. It also considers how some ecologists questioned the relevance of phylogenetic corrections for ecology and concludes by analyzing the emergence of ecological phylogenetics or ecophylogenetics.

The Legacy of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’

2019 ◽  
pp. 156-195
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Student ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

The penultimate chapter looks at the longer-term impact of the efflorescence of evolutionary speculation in early-nineteenth-century Edinburgh on later generations of natural historians. First it examines the evangelical reaction against progressive models of the history of life and its role in the eclipse of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians.’ Next it examines to the evolutionary theory proposed by Robert Chambers in his anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) to assess its possible debt to the Edinburgh transformists of the 1820s and 1830s. Finally it turns to the important question of the possible influence of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’ on Charles Darwin during his time as a medical student in Edinburgh in the years 1825 to 1827, during which period he rubbed shoulders with many of the key proponents of evolutionary ideas in the city.

Russian Darwinism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Vucinich
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
50Th Anniversary ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Materialism ◽  
Inheritance Of Acquired Characteristics

The Russian scientific community welcomed Darwin’s evolutionary theory and made it a basis of research in a wide range of biological sciences. Russian evolutionary studies in embryology, paleontology, microbiology and pathology attracted international attention. The vast scope of Darwin’s popularity in Russia was dramatically manifested in 1909, on the occasion of the national celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the great English scientist and the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species. All universities, naturalist societies, and many newspapers and popular journals took part in the celebration, which produced a hundred praiseful publications on Darwinian themes. University philosophers, steeped in metaphysical idealism and spiritualism, linked Darwinism to what they called ‘modern scientific materialism’ and rejected it wholly. They were strongly predisposed to welcome modern revivals of metaphysical vitalism. Freelance philosophers, usually associated with heterodox ideological movements and influenced by Auguste Comte’s positivism or various modern neopositivist and Neo-Kantian currents, credited Darwinism with making science a major topic of modern philosophy. A new discipline, known as ‘scientific philosophy’, rapidly developing in the West, made its first appearance in Russia. In the Soviet Union, Darwin’s evolutionary theory followed a course of cataclysmic ruptures. During the 1920s, Soviet scientists made significant contributions to the study of the role of the genetic environment in biological evolution and helped set the stage for an evolutionary synthesis of Darwinism and genetics. The Stalinist era (1929–53) marked a drastic departure from the prevalent currents in evolutionary biology. It was dominated by the rise of Lysenkoism, a pseudo-science identified as ‘creative Darwinism’, and was guided by a diluted version of the Lamarckian idea of evolution as a product of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lysenkoism rejected the Darwinian conception of natural selection, downgraded the role of physico-chemical analysis in biology, and paid no attention to molecular biology. In 1948 Lysenkoism was officially recognized as the Marxist theory of evolution. Under Lysenko’s influence, genetics was proclaimed a ‘bourgeois science’ and was made illegal. The downfall of Lysenkoism in 1964 brought the re-establishment of genetics, a full-scale return to true Darwinism, and a re-intensified interest in ‘evolutionary synthesis’.

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