Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, a popularising 1942 book by Julian Huxley (grandson of T.H. Huxley), set out his vision of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology of the mid-20th century. It was enthusiastically reviewed in academic biology journals. [1] [2] [3] [4]
In the book, Huxley tackles the subject of evolution at full length, in what became the defining work of his life. His role was that of a synthesiser rather than a researcher, and it helped that he had met many of the other participants. His book was written whilst he was Secretary to the Zoological Society of London, and made use of his remarkable collection of reprints covering the first part of the century. It was published in 1942.
Allen & Unwin, London. (1942, reprinted 1943, 1944, 1945, 1948, 1955; 2nd ed, with new introduction and bibliography by the author, 1963; 3rd ed, with new introduction and bibliography by nine contributors, 1974). U.S. first edition by Harper, 1943.
Reviewing the book for American Scientist in 1943, the geologist Kirtley Mather wrote that the book provided "an admirable digest" of decades of work by many scientists. Mather commented "Of general interest is Huxley’s defense of the Darwinian concept of evolution, under attack by Hogben, Bateson and other biologists, amusingly reminiscent of bygone days when another Huxley championed the cause of evolution in a wholly different battle." Mather noted, too, that Huxley emphasises evolutionary progress, not by assuming that it means specialisation or "improvement" over earlier forms, but that attaining greater control over the environment and independence from it show man's progress at a new direction or rather at a higher level with "increases of aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual experience and satisfaction." [5]
The historian and philosopher of science Ehud Lamm, on the book's reissue in 2010 for Darwin's bicentenary, writes that at almost 800 pages it was longer than the other "milestone" 1942 book on the modern synthesis, Ernst Mayr's Systematics and the Origin of Species . Lamm calls it remarkable that both books were described as popular accounts at the time, and notes that Huxley states in his introduction that he was setting out to promote a "synthetic point of view" on Darwinian evolution. Huxley was not just trying to synthesise natural selection with Mendelian genetics "as the Modern Synthesis is often presented", writes Lamm, but to include also "genetics, developmental physiology, ecology, systematics, paleontology, cytology [cell biology], and mathematical analysis." Lamm notes that the book was successful, with revised editions in 1963 and 1974, both of which added lengthy introductions that attempted to bring the book "at least partly up to date", given what Lamm and Huxley agreed were very large changes in the field. The 1942 text however was "a more tolerant, pluralistic, view of evolution than we have come to expect in the wake of the "hardening of the synthesis" (as Stephen Gould so aptly put it), with plenty of coverage of two "rebels", the discoverer of chromosomal crossover, Cyril Darlington, and the "avowedly anti-neoDarwinian" mutationist Richard Goldschmidt. Lamm notes that Goldschmidt's ideas on "genome-wide upheavals" may after all not be far wrong, given the epigenetic changes that can be caused by environmental stress. Huxley agreed with Darlington that hybridization and the polyploidy it could cause could result in increased variation and speciation. Lamm notes, too, that Huxley anticipated evolutionary developmental biology's attention to embryonic development for understanding evolution. Finally, the review observes that "It has long been debated whether the so-called Modern Synthesis was overall a positive force in biology, or whether its lacunae [gaps] undermine its contributions" and notes that people (such as Massimo Pigliucci) have called for a renewed synthesis, though biologists differ about its direction. [6]
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. Also called Darwinian theory, it originally included the broad concepts of transmutation of species or of evolution which gained general scientific acceptance after Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, including concepts which predated Darwin's theories. English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley coined the term Darwinism in April 1860.
Neo-Darwinism is generally used to describe any integration of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics. It mostly refers to evolutionary theory from either 1895 or 1942, but it can mean any new Darwinian- and Mendelian-based theory, such as the current evolutionary theory.
The modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity into a joint mathematical framework. Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962), and the first President of the British Humanist Association.
Edmund Brisco "Henry" Ford was a British ecological geneticist. He was a leader among those British biologists who investigated the role of natural selection in nature. As a schoolboy Ford became interested in lepidoptera, the group of insects which includes butterflies and moths. He went on to study the genetics of natural populations, and invented the field of ecological genetics. Ford was awarded the Royal Society's Darwin Medal in 1954. In the wider world his best known work is Butterflies (1945).
Icons of Evolution is a book by Jonathan Wells, an advocate of the pseudoscientific intelligent design argument for the existence of God and fellow of the Discovery Institute, in which Wells criticizes the paradigm of evolution by attacking how it is taught. The book includes a 2002 video companion. In 2000, Wells summarized the book's contents in an article in the American Spectator. Several of the scientists whose work is sourced in the book have written rebuttals to Wells, stating that they were quoted out of context, that their work has been misrepresented, or that it does not imply Wells's conclusions.
Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some goal (teleology) due to some internal mechanism or "driving force". According to the theory, the largest-scale trends in evolution have an absolute goal such as increasing biological complexity. Prominent historical figures who have championed some form of evolutionary progress include Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Henri Bergson.
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis is a book by the biologist E. O. Wilson. It helped start the sociobiology debate, one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century and part of the wider debate about evolutionary psychology and the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Wilson popularized the term "sociobiology" as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviour such as altruism, aggression, and the nurturing of the young. It formed a position within the long-running nature versus nurture debate. The fundamental principle guiding sociobiology is that an organism's evolutionary success is measured by the extent to which its genes are represented in the next generation.
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. In the theory, mutation was the source of novelty, creating new forms and new species, potentially instantaneously, in sudden jumps. This was envisaged as driving evolution, which was thought to be limited by the supply of mutations.
Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, former co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast, and former editor in chief for the online magazine Scientia Salon. He is a critic of pseudoscience and creationism, and an advocate for secularism and science education.
Sir Edward Bagnall Poulton, FRS HFRSE FLS was a British evolutionary biologist, a lifelong advocate of natural selection through a period in which many scientists such as Reginald Punnett doubted its importance. He invented the term sympatric for evolution of species in the same place, and in his book The Colours of Animals (1890) was the first to recognise frequency-dependent selection. Poulton is also remembered for his pioneering work on animal coloration. He is credited with inventing the term aposematism for warning coloration, as well as for his experiments on 'protective coloration' (camouflage). Poulton became Hope Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford in 1893.
Peter J. Bowler is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics. His 1984 book, Evolution: The History of an Idea is a standard textbook on the history of evolution; a 25th anniversary edition came in 2009. His 1983 book The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades Around 1900 describes the scientific predominance of other evolutionary theories which led many to minimise the significance of natural selection, in the first part of the twentieth century before genetics was reconciled with natural selection in the modern synthesis.
In biology, saltation is a sudden and large mutational change from one generation to the next, potentially causing single-step speciation. This was historically offered as an alternative to Darwinism. Some forms of mutationism were effectively saltationist, implying large discontinuous jumps.
Genetic assimilation is a process described by Conrad H. Waddington by which a phenotype originally produced in response to an environmental condition, such as exposure to a teratogen, later becomes genetically encoded via artificial selection or natural selection. Despite superficial appearances, this does not require the (Lamarckian) inheritance of acquired characters, although epigenetic inheritance could potentially influence the result. Waddington stated that genetic assimilation overcomes the barrier to selection imposed by what he called canalization of developmental pathways; he supposed that the organism's genetics evolved to ensure that development proceeded in a certain way regardless of normal environmental variations.
Guy Coburn Robson (1888–1945) was a British zoologist, specializing in Mollusca, who first named and described Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid.
Julian Huxley used the phrase "the eclipse of Darwinism" to describe the state of affairs prior to what he called the "modern synthesis". During the "eclipse", evolution was widely accepted in scientific circles but relatively few biologists believed that natural selection was its primary mechanism. Historians of science such as Peter J. Bowler have used the same phrase as a label for the period within the history of evolutionary thought from the 1880s to around 1920, when alternatives to natural selection were developed and explored—as many biologists considered natural selection to have been a wrong guess on Charles Darwin's part, or at least to be of relatively minor importance.
Gerd B. Müller is an Austrian biologist who is emeritus professor at the University of Vienna where he was the head of the Department of Theoretical Biology in the Center for Organismal Systems Biology. His research interests focus on vertebrate limb development, evolutionary novelties, evo-devo theory, and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. He is also concerned with the development of 3D based imaging tools in developmental biology.
What Darwin Got Wrong is a 2010 book by philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, in which the authors criticize Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. It is an extension of an argument first presented as "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings" in the London Review of Books.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to evolution:
The extended evolutionary synthesis consists of a set of theoretical concepts argued to be more comprehensive than the earlier modern synthesis of evolutionary biology that took place between 1918 and 1942. The extended evolutionary synthesis was called for in the 1950s by C. H. Waddington, argued for on the basis of punctuated equilibrium by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in the 1980s, and was reconceptualized in 2007 by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller. Notably, Dr. Müller concluded from this research that Natural Selection has no way of explaining speciation, saying: “selection has no innovative capacity...the generative and the ordering aspects of morphological evolution are thus absent from evolutionary theory.”