The central concern of this essay is the relationship between the synthetic theory of evolution and neighboring sciences. In writing about “the evolutionary paradigm” (a title suggested by Max Hecht), I hope to play the role of a philosophical gadfly. In particular, I argue that, in one of the most important ways in which philosophers and scientists use the term “paradigm” these days, there is no evolutionary paradigm – and, hence, no influence of “the” evolutionary paradigm.

Obviously, I do not mean to suggest that Darwinism has been without influence. Rather, I wish to probe the way we think about the practice and the unity of evolutionary theory and evolutionary biology in general. I suggest that the muddy concept of a paradigm, as commonly used these days, is one that we can do quite well without, thank you very much. I suggest that bypassing that concept will help us to focus more clear-headedly on the influence of the current variant of Darwin's theory: the so-called synthetic theory of evolution.

Given the special interest of this symposium in assessing the directions in which evolutionary biology is headed, I emphasize a characteristic of evolutionary theory that I think is of great importance in thinking about its future: namely, its peculiarly historical character. I claim that a full appreciation of the nature of historical theories, historical reasoning, and their role in evolutionary biology ought to shape much of our thinking about the relation of evolutionary biology to other branches of biology and to the sciences more generally.