12.27.05
Unfinished Synthesis
Quote of the Day: From Robert Reid’s Evolutionary Theory: The Unfinished Synthesis, Cornell,1985, page 1.
One hundred and twenty seven years have now elapsed since Darwin and Wallace (1858) formulated the theory that evolution had occurred largely as a result of natural selection.2 Although one prominent Darwinist found the centenary of the theory an occasion for remarking that ‘a hundred years without Darwin is enough’, the hypothesis of Darwin and Wallace had become the most deeply entrenched of biological doctrines, and the confidence of Darwinists had been further stiffened by the revelations of molecular biology: admiration of the founder reached euphoric levels.3 My under- graduate career as a student of zoology began in that centennial year , and Darwinistic confidence and euphoria saw me through a number of zoological problems that did not quite seem to fit the Darwinist mould; but this was probably because of inadequate data requiring further research. Dissenters who claimed that Darwinism was not enough, or indeed quite wrong, were not to be taken seriously; vitalism, Lamarckism, mysticism and senility were recurring conditions in every generation of biology. On occasions when I was called upon to teach a fragment of evolution theory to first year biology students I thought my failure to understand selection theory fully was the result of the specialisation of the subject beyond my simple comprehension. Confident that every aspect of natural selection was for the best, I little knew that it had long been criticised for just that Panglossian felicity.