An Extended Synthesis for Evolutionary Biology
Annals of the New York Academy of Science 1168:218-228 (2009)
| Abstract | Evolutionary theory is undergoing an intense period of discussion and reevaluation. This, contrary to the misleading claims of creationists and other pseudoscientists, is no harbinger of a crisis but rather the opposite: the field is expanding dramatically in terms of both empirical discoveries and new ideas. In this essay I briefly trace the conceptual history of evolutionary theory from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism, and from the Modern Synthesis to what I refer to as the Extended Synthesis, a more inclusive conceptual framework containing among others evo–devo, an expanded theory of heredity, elements of complexity theory, ideas about evolvability, and a reevaluation of levels of selection. I argue that evolutionary biology has never seen a paradigm shift, in the philosophical sense of the term, except when it moved from natural theology to empirical science in the middle of the 19th century. The Extended Synthesis, accordingly, is an expansion of the Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, and one that—like its predecessor—will probably take decades to complete. | |||||||||
| Keywords | extended synthesis evolutionary theory natural selection | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
  |
| External links | This entry has no external links. Add one. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMassimo Pigliucci (2007). Do We Need an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis? Evolution 61 (12):2743-2749.
Massimo Pigliucci (2008). Is Evolvability Evolvable? Nature Reviews Genetics 9:75-82.
Massimo Pigliucci (2009). Down with Natural Selection? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 52 (1):134-140.
Gerd Muller & Massimo Pigliucci (2011). Extended Synthesis: Theory Expansion or Alternative? Biological Theory 5 (3):275-276.
Massimo Pigliucci, Courtney Murren & Carl Schlichting (2006). Phenotypic Plasticity and Evolution by Genetic Assimilation. Journal of Experimental Biology 209:2362-2367.
Massimo Pigliucci (ed.) (2010). Foreword to Julian Huxley's "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis". MIT Press.
Massimo Pigliucci (2008). The Proper Role of Population Genetics in Modern Evolutionary Theory. Biological Theory 3 (4):316-324.
Sahotra Sarkar (2004). Evolutionary Theory in the 1920s: The Nature of the "Synthesis". Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1215-1226.
Sahotra Sarkar (2004). Evolutionary Theory in the 1920s: The Nature of the “Synthesis”. Philosophy of Science 71 (5):1215-1226.
Massimo Pigliucci (2005). Expanding Evolution. [REVIEW] Nature 435:565-566.
Juha Tuomi (1992). Evolutionary Synthesis: A Search for the Strategy. Philosophy of Science 59 (3):429-438.
William C. Wimsatt (2006). Generative Entrenchment and an Evolutionary Developmental Biology for Culture. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4):364-366.
Nikolai Krementsov (2007). A Particular Synthesis: Aleksandr Promptov and Speciation in Birds. Journal of the History of Biology 40 (4):637 - 682.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2011-03-22Total downloads76 ( #10,591 of 549,065 )Recent downloads (6 months)51 ( #506 of 549,065 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
