Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory

by Niles Eldredge

Book Overview

An insider's provocative account of one of the most contentious debates in science today

When Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, two of the world's leading evolutionary theorists, proposed a bold new theory of evolution--the theory of "punctuated equilibria"--they stood the standard interpretation of Darwin on its head. They also ignited a furious debate about the true nature of evolution.

On the one side are the geneticists. They contend...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471303011
• ISBN13: 9780471303015
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A SPIRITED PRESENTATION OF CURRENT (CIRCA 1995) EVOLUTIONARY DEBATE

Niles Eldredge (born 1943) is an American paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972. He states in the Prologue to this 1995 book, "The present book ... also serves as an account, from my naturalistic perspective, of the arguments and dialogues within evolutionary biology in modern times.... It is partisan---in the way, for example, Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author and The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design paint a glowing picture of his side of affairs--and a rather unflattering portrait of our side..." Eldredge divides the current debate into two camps: "ultra-Darwinians, my name for the articulators of the gene-centered and essentially reductionistic approach to evolutionary explanation; and naturalists. Naturalists include paleontologists such as myself, but also include ecologists, systematists, and other sorts of evolutionary-minded biologists who see the reductionist stance of the ultra-Darwinians as a distortedly oversimplified view of the natural world..." (pg. 4) Eldredge presents some highly interesting ideas: e.g., "Abrupt appearance of species may mean--and in fact, very often do mean--that the species migrated into the area in response to changing environmental conditions.... evolutionary novelty ... cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossili record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution." (pg. 94-95) He concludes on the note, "It comes down to this: the competing allure of an essentially reductionist stance--with its charms of apparent simplicity and elegance--versus a partitioning of complexity into component systems--the naturalistic edifice that, while perhaps not as neat, seems to me a more accurate description of actual biological systems." (pg. 226-227)

A View from the Trenches

In 'Reinventing Darwin', Niles Eldredge presents the view of a different side of the issues presented by what he calls 'Ultra-Darwinists', the likes of Richard Dawkins and Maynard Smith. As such, it raises an important contribution to our understanding of natural history, and is essential for anyone interested in current debates inside of Neodarwinism.Perhaps the most striking thing about 'Reinventing Darwin', is how little attention Eldredge pays to the design of actual animal bodies and behaviors. Richard Dawkins's books, for example, are filled with explanation of various complex and semi-designed things - such as altruism in 'The Selfish Gene'. 'The Blind Watchmaker' is entirely devoted to the question of how things like wings, eyes and legs are formed by natural selection.Eldredge, on the other hand, is hardly ever interested in these issues. He does make a halfhearted attack on the 'Panglossian' kind, which is associated with Gould, but Eldredge had little to do with the paper about the Arches of San Marino. Eldredge readily concedes that the great majority of animal features are formed by natural selection (p.48).So what is the focus of Eldredge book, and the main line of critique of the Ultra-Darwinists? The answer is the larger patterns of natural history. Eldredge believes that the history of life is not just the principles of natural selection extrapolated. Rather, Eldredge believes that in the large scale, there are different principles that govern life, additions to simple natural selection.Eldredge is most convincing when he discusses the importance of species as players in evolution. Eldredge points out that within species, different groups ('demes') can evolve differences from the main group, but that species are normally one reproductive entity, and that thus small differences get merged back into the species average. Thus only when a distinct reproductive body is formed (usually by geographical separation from the main group), evolution can create a new species. This form of higher level evolution seems logical and natural. However, Eldredge arguments about higher level selection (species selection) is not very clear, convincing, or forcefully argued. The best of what Eldredge does promote is Elizabeth Vrba's theory, that species often exist in a more general archetype and in unique, specialized species. Vrba found out that there is a higher level of specification from those specialized species than the more general group. Eldredge argues that this is because the more specialized species, when moving to a different environment, face stronger evolutionary pressure. This he called 'Species Sorting', and this (as opposed to the argument that there is competition between various animal species and Taxas), I find easy to accept. I do wish that Eldredge would elaborate on empirical ways to verify his conclusion. Indeed, the book as a whole could benefit from more attention to how the differences between Ultra-Darwini

Eldredge's Impassioned Defense of Punctuated Equilibria

Niles Eldredge's "Rethinking Darwin" is a slender tome which advocates a major restructuring of the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution, pleading for a major shift away from its population genetics roots towards more emphasis on the significance of speciation and its historical legacy - according to Eldredge - in prevailing patterns of stasis seen within the fossil record. Although Eldredge does not deny the importance of Natural Selection as the primary means of evolutionary change, he notes - and I think correctly - that its relevance to speciation is still not well known, especially from a real-world "naturalist" perspective.Building from his ideas on punctuated equilibria, Eldredge makes a very persuasive case for stasis in the fossil record and its implications for microevolution as well as macroevolution. He does an excellent job linking Ernst Mayr's theory of allopatric speciation to punctuated equilibria, noting that something akin to it - if not allopatric speciation directly - is the mechanism responsible for abrupt appearances in the fossil record. Eldredge also notes the significance of long-term stasis in ecosystems, which he has observed in ongoing research on Middle Devonian (approximately 370-360 million years) marine ecosystems in what is now New York with paleontologist Carlton Brett and his colleagues.Admittedly Eldredge does come across as a petulant schoolboy in his tone, which is perhaps quite intentional, especially after referring to the "High Table" of British university academics of the likes of biologist John Maynard Smith. But one would be greatly amiss to pay sole attention to Eldredge's complaints, without considering some important implications for evolutionary theory which he addresses in this well-reasoned, well-written work of scientific prose.

At the High Table of Theory

Regardless of one's perspective on evolution this is an important and essential clarifying history of the debate over punctuated equilibrium from one of the original theorists of this phenomenon.The book opens with the metaphor of the High Table of evolutionary theory, and its exclusionary imagery, as between the Ultra-Darwinians and the paleontologists, the former emphasizing continuity,the latter discovering the element of discontinuity next to the perception of stasis visible in the fossil record. Eldredge attempts to distinguish those who espouse the 'grand heresy' of rejecting the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis from those who, remaining within its confines, nonetheless do not wish to attribute population level phenomena to such disparate entities as species, higher taxa, social systems, and ecosystems. This is an important distinction in a subject that is liable to inexact extrapolations or failure to stay within the complexity of the picture actually dealt with by paleontologists, which includes such hypotheses as those of 'species sorting', which is quite different from the Ultra-Darwinian views on group selection. At the end Eldredge moves on to considerations of complex systems in relation to the original idea of punctuated equilibrium. Much confused extrapolation has made off with the term 'punctuated equilibrium' which has a host of associations naturalists dislike and Eldredge clearly sets the record straight. The book should speak for itself. And yet in the process of attempted clarification, one gets a sense that the High Table has become exclusionary in another sense, that the debate is divided between two poles of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis, to the exclusion of many others who should be seated at this august theoretical table. For the accounts of these issues leave one suspicious that the woolly minded critics and extrapolators are onto something the strict Darwinists will not consider. Indeed, Eldredge himself in his earlier Myths of Evolution examines the 'punctuated equilbrium'-like phenomenon visible in world history itself, one that Darwinists seem afraid to acknowledge for it makes mincemeat of the whole question. As we examine the record of evolution and the contradictions of continuity and the unlikelihood of random evolution, we should think the record will show some compression factor as evidence of an unknown system process. And that is just what the discovery of the punctuated equilibrium process has demonstrated. But the account seems confused or ambiguous to the degree of sitting between two stools, and the theories of both parties at the High Table seem inadequate. As to world history, the 'punctuated equilibrium' phenomenon there, if we choose to call it that, is so far from what strict Darwinists would expect yet so obvious to plain view, once seen in the proper light, that we should remain neutral in this debate, for the suspicion is overwhelming, especially for the descent of man, that Darwinism is very far off the

An Insider's View of Academic Posturing

I really enjoyed this book, even though I don't see the importance of the debate. Each side (the scientists who study genes vs. the scientists who study fossils) has their own area of expertise, and within that area, their conclusions appear to be totally supported by the own evidence. The solution, I believe, will be found on the genetics side, as they discover exactly how a small "mutation" changes primitive organisms. Our genome is so huge, and tangled with billions of years of false starts and dead ends, that mutations in our genomes don't produce new species, the way similar mutations did in the Cambrian. I suspect this book is actually aimed at those who don't accept evolution, to show that all the available evidence has been examined "under a microscope," and that reputable scientists aren't afraid to present both sides of an issue in a single work. Contrast this with the Creationists, who feel free to present any theory, or possible interpretation of a piece of evidence, without evaluating it for credibility.