Book contents
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Understanding Life
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Species
- 2 Organicism and Mechanism: Rival Root Metaphors
- 3 “The Non-Darwinian Revolution?”
- 4 The Synthesis
- 5 Is Natural Selection a Vera Causa?
- 6 The Positive Case
- 7 Time for a Change?
- 8 Natural Selection and Its Discontents
- Envoi
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References
- Figure Credits
- Index
7 - Time for a Change?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2022
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Understanding Life
- Understanding Natural Selection
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 The Origin of Species
- 2 Organicism and Mechanism: Rival Root Metaphors
- 3 “The Non-Darwinian Revolution?”
- 4 The Synthesis
- 5 Is Natural Selection a Vera Causa?
- 6 The Positive Case
- 7 Time for a Change?
- 8 Natural Selection and Its Discontents
- Envoi
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References
- Figure Credits
- Index
Summary
Turn now to those who think natural selection is vastly overrated as a cause of evolutionary change. It is at best a clean-up process after the real creative work has been done. It is little surprise that these critics come from within the organismic model, implicitly or explicitly. At the scientific level, we have encountered already the most (and properly) distinguished of them all, the American population geneticist Sewall Wright. Remember his “shifting balance theory,” where the key lay in genetic drift, as gene levels fluctuated randomly in small subpopulations, and then, when new adaptive features appeared, the subpopulations rejoined the larger group (probably the species), and through a form of group selection the new feature spread through the whole group. This is highly Spencerian – infused with a solid dose of Bergsonian vitalism – as equilibrium is disturbed and then regained at a higher level, part of an overall progressive process, presumably ending in humankind.
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- Understanding Natural Selection , pp. 104 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022