Abstract
In this chapter we present a brief history of the Modern Synthesis and some comments on its logical structure and emphasize its framing role in modern biology. In doing so we clarify what evolution is. We then turn our attention to recent claims that the Modern Synthesis requires extending in order to deal with new findings in biology. At the core of these arguments are two assertions: (1) that other inheritance systems have conceptual parity with genetic inheritance and (2) that development introduces new variation over which selection can operate. In order to make these arguments, models of causation within the Modern Synthesis are challenged. We demonstrate that these challenges arise from analogical rather than formal reasoning and are false.
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29 November 2018
Correction to: The Extent of the Modern Synthesis: The Foundational Framework for Evolutionary Biology
Notes
- 1.
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace disagreed on the relative importance of environmental causes in evolution. Darwin felt that competition between individuals was more important than environmental changes in driving selection. Wallace felt the reverse. For the purposes of exposition, we will see both as environmental causes as both are extrinsic to the units of inheritance in the Modern Synthesis. Undoubtedly both contribute to competition.
- 2.
The association of mutations arose during the development of Mendelism.
- 3.
While Mayr clearly explained and advanced the use of proximate and ultimate causation, the distinction is found in earlier biological work. For example, the introductory comments in a special issue of Ibis from 1950 make mention of ultimate factors (Thomson 1950).
- 4.
Note: natural selection itself is not purposive. This is not orthogenesis.
- 5.
M = Malthus; D = Darwin.
- 6.
The precise interaction with population level process is never explicated, not least because the assumption is that all new mechanisms of soft inheritance have conceptual and ontological parity with genetic mechanisms. In our view this is an unresolved empirical matter.
- 7.
We will only discuss sexually reproducing species here, for ease of exposition. But note that all of these arguments apply to asexual organisms too.
- 8.
This use of the term evolution is odd. Evolution does not act on anything; “evolution” describes a kind of change, change that can be caused by natural selection, drift, etc.
- 9.
Alternative DNA methyltransferases, for example, can bring about de novo methylation of cytosine, or they may recognize and methylate hemi-methylated sequences resulting from replication of a methylated parent molecule.
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Dickins, T.E., Dickins, B.J.A. (2018). The Extent of the Modern Synthesis: The Foundational Framework for Evolutionary Biology. In: Burggren, W., Dubansky, B. (eds) Development and Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75935-7_7
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