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Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and Time: A Case Study in Problems of Coherence in the Measurement of Geological Time (The ‘KBS’ Tuff Controversy and the Dating of Rocks in the Turkana Basin, Kenya)

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Book cover Measurement, Realism and Objectivity

Part of the book series: Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 5))

Abstract

The present paper was initially stimulated by attendance at a lecture in Montreal in March 1985 by a young English geologist, Peter G. Williamson, on the results of his researches on Pleistocene shells at a site in Kenya, east of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf). Dr. Williamson, who currently holds an appointment at the Agassiz Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, is a keen exponent of the theory of ’punctuated equilibrium’ in evolutionary biology. In his Montreal lecture, he claimed that his observations in Kenya provided compelling empirical evidence that shell forms could remain largely unchanged for very considerable periods, but could also change rapidly on occasions in a series of ’punctuations’.

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  1. University of New South Wales, NSW, Australia

    David R. Oldroyd

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  1. School of Science, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

    John Forge

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© 1987 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland

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Oldroyd, D.R. (1987). Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and Time: A Case Study in Problems of Coherence in the Measurement of Geological Time (The ‘KBS’ Tuff Controversy and the Dating of Rocks in the Turkana Basin, Kenya). In: Forge, J. (eds) Measurement, Realism and Objectivity. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3919-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3919-6_4

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