Theoretical Biology and Evolutionary Theory

Abstract

During the nineteen-sixties and seventies, several biologists made decisive contributions to the development of evolutionary thought and theoretical biology, smoothly bridging the gap between science and humanities, and overcoming the classic antagonism Snow claimed to exist between the two worlds. Scientists like Jacob , Lorenz , Monod , Rensch , von Bertalanffy or Waddington , to whom I pay homage here, are a select group of scientists pertaining to the so-called third culture, who have staged a scientific assault on Natural Philosophy—the forerunners of subsequent science popularisers such as Dawkins , Gould , Penrose , Gell-Mann or Pinker . Finally I call for a more detailed study of the recent history of Theoretical Biology, to put it on a par with that undertaken for Evolutionary Biology, with an understanding that the latter is a pillar of the former.