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The Modern Synthesis: Its Scope and Limits

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Elliott R. Sober
Elliott R. Sober*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

The Modern Synthesis, according to Gould (1980, p. 119), “has broken down on both its fundamental claims: extrapolationism (gradual allelic substitution for all evolutionary change) and nearly exclusive reliance on selection leading to adaptation.” In another place (1982b, p. 380), he writes that “the essence of Darwinism lies in the claim that natural selection is a creative force, and in the reductionist assertion that selection upon individual organisms is the locus of evolutionary change.” There is a trivial question of terminology here, and perhaps a less trivial question of historiography. Does Darwinism have an essence, and was the Modern Synthesis as monolithic as all that? Sewall Wright used to be routinely cited as one of the main synthesizers. Does it now turn out that his models of interdemic selection retroactively cast him into the outer darkness (on which see Orzack 1981 and Gould 1981)?

Type
Part VI. Recent Developments in Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1982 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1982 , 1982 , pp. 314 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I want to thank the Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for providing financial support in the form of a Romnes Faculty Fellowship.

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