2
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Before hierarchy: the rise and fall of Stephen Jay Gould's first macroevolutionary synthesis.

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Few of Stephen Jay Gould's accomplishments in evolutionary biology have received more attention than his hierarchical theory of evolution, which postulates a causal discontinuity between micro- and macroevolutionary events. But Gould's hierarchical theory was his second attempt to supply a theoretical framework for macroevolutionary studies-and one he did not inaugurate until the mid-1970s. In this paper, I examine Gould's first attempt: a proposed fusion of theoretical morphology, multivariate biometry and the experimental study of adaptation in fossils. This early "macroevolutionary synthesis" was predicated on the notion that parallelism and convergence dominate the history of higher taxa, and moreover, that they can be explained in terms of adaptation leading to mechanical improvement. In this paper, I explore the origins and contents of Gould's first macroevolutionary synthesis, as well as the reasons for its downfall. In addition, I consider how various developments during the mid-1970s led Gould to identify hierarchy and constraint as the leading themes of macroevolutionary studies-and adaptation as a macroevolutionary red herring.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Hist Philos Life Sci
          History and philosophy of the life sciences
          Springer Nature
          0391-9714
          0391-9714
          Jun 2017
          : 39
          : 2
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Department of Philosophy, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN, 55455-0310, USA. dreso004@umn.edu.
          Article
          10.1007/s40656-017-0133-6
          10.1007/s40656-017-0133-6
          28357814
          91995b66-ee98-42d6-b880-b37eb25661b0
          History

          Adaptation,Macroevolution,Paleontology,Progress,Stephen Jay Gould

          Comments

          Comment on this article