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Declarations in Favour of Orthogenesis in the 1900–1930s

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Abstract

The ideas of directed evolution were especially popular in palaeontology. They were also supported by idealistic morphologists, who described “typological affinities” of biological structures without analysing either their origin or their adaptive significance. This analysis revealed morphological regularities, which were used as arguments in favour of orthogenesis. Some taxonomists, zoologists, botanists, geneticists, biochemists also supported orthogenesis at that time, criticising the adaptationistic paradigm and revealing certain laws of variation and evolution. Some of their arguments still seem convincing.

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  1. Saint Petersburg State University, N. N. Petrov Research Institute of Oncology, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Igor Popov

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  1. Igor Popov
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Popov, I. (2018). Declarations in Favour of Orthogenesis in the 1900–1930s. In: Orthogenesis versus Darwinism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95144-7_4

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