Forces, friction and fractionation: Denis Walsh’s Organisms, agency, and evolution

Buskell, Andrew; Currie, Adrian

doi:10.1007/s10539-017-9585-z

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Noble seems to search for some other explanation than natural selection of organismal adaptation and it is unclear if it is even a scientific one (Noble 2021). Similarly, some critics of the MS and contemporary evolutionary more or less openly admit that they aim to re-introduce metaphysical principles in biology by highlighting organismal "agency" (Walsh 2015;Buskell and Currie 2017;Dupré 2021), which the majority of evolutionary biologists, including the present author, firmly reject.…”

Section: Extrascientific Criticisms Of the Ms: Adaptation Without Natural Selection?mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The Israeli philosopher Ehud Lamm notes in a critical book review that the MS was a complex evolutionary process that is now well behind us (Lamm 2018), and similar views have been expressed by some science historians (Reif et al 2000;Cain 2009). Today, the MS mainly serves as a rethorical figure and an argument pushed by those calling for radical conceptual change in evolutionary biology (Buskell and Currie 2017;Lamm 2018). Clearly, much of the debate about the MS has less to do with the synthesis per se and instead seems to reveal the underlying identity politics of some reformers.…”

Section: What the Modern Synthesis Was (And Was Not)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1 lead me to two conclusions. First, calling for a new synthesis by pointing to limitations of the MS has been a popular and widely used tactic for decades to express strong discontent and push for new ideas (Buskell and Currie 2017;Lamm 2018). In this context, the MS has mainly served as a justification for other grand projects, often also labelled "syntheses" of various kind.…”

Section: Recent Challenges To the Msmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The structure of evolutionary theory: Beyond Neo-Darwinism, Neo-Lamarckism and biased historical narratives about the Modern Synthesis

Svensson¹

2021

Preprint

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The last decades have seen frequent calls for a more extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) that will supposedly overcome the limitations in the current evolutionary framework with its intellectual roots in the Modern Synthesis (MS). Some radical critics even want to entirely abandon the current evolutionary framework, claiming that the MS (often erroneously labelled “Neo-Darwinism”) is outdated, and will soon be replaced by an entirely new framework, such as the Third Way of Evolution (TWE). Such criticisms are not new, but have repeatedly re-surfaced every decade since the formation of the MS, and were particularly articulated by developmental biologist Conrad Waddington and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Waddington, Gould and later critics argued that the MS was too narrowly focused on genes and natural selection, and that it ignored developmental processes, epigenetics, paleontology and macroevolutionary phenomena. More recent critics partly recycle these old arguments and argue that non-genetic inheritance, niche construction, phenotypic plasticity and developmental bias necessitate major revision of evolutionary theory. Here I discuss these supposed challenges, taking a historical perspective and tracing these arguments back to Waddington and Gould. I dissect the old arguments by Waddington, Gould and more recent critics that the MS was excessively gene centric and became increasingly “hardened” over time and narrowly focused on natural selection. Recent critics have consciously or unconsciously exaggerated the long-lasting influence of the MS on contemporary evolutionary biology and have underestimated many post-Synthesis developments, particularly Neutral Theory and evolutionary quantitative genetics. Critics have also painted a biased picture of the MS as a more monolithic research tradition than it ever was, and have downplayed the pluralistic nature of contemporary evolutionary biology, particularly the long-lasting influence of Sewall Wright with his emphasis on gene interactions and stochasticity. Finally, I outline and visualize the conceptually split landscape of contemporary evolutionary biology, with four different stably coexisting analytical frameworks: adaptationism, mutationism, neutralism and selectionism. I suggest that the field can accommodate the challenges raised by critics, although structuralism (“EvoDevo”) and macroevolution remain to be conceptually integrated within mainstream evolutionary theory.

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Section: Extrascientific Criticisms Of the Ms: Adaptation Without Natural Selection?mentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: What the Modern Synthesis Was (And Was Not)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Recent Challenges To the Msmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The structure of evolutionary theory: Beyond Neo-Darwinism, Neo-Lamarckism and biased historical narratives about the Modern Synthesis

Svensson¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Here we need to examine two additional argumentative lines advanced by the comprehensive view. The first one comes as a kind of bold, transcendental argument in which the teleological conception of agency, i.e., the agent theory [ 4 , 12 ], is claimed to be necessary to recognize the centrality of organisms in evolution [ 52 ]. Walsh explains: “[M]odern synthesis evolutionary biology doesn’t recognize the contribution of organisms to evolution (…).…”

Section: The Autopoietic Approach To Evolution: a Third And Better Wa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

Villalobos

Frick

Vicencio-Jimenez

2022

Entropy

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The New Evolutionary Synthesis (NES) groups a series of theories that, departing from the gene-centric approach of Modern Synthesis evolutionary theory (MS), place the organism as the central agent of evolution. Two versions of NES, each one with advantages and disadvantages, can be distinguished in this regard; the restrictive NES and the comprehensive NES. Comparatively, the comprehensive NES is a more robust theoretical construction than the restrictive one because it comes grounded on a general, thermodynamically informed theory of living beings (something that the restrictive NES lacks). However, due to its strong teleological commitments, the comprehensive NES has serious problems fitting with modern science’s methodological framework; a problem that the restrictive version, with no explicit commitment to teleology, does not face. In this paper, we propose the autopoietic approach to evolution as a way of integrating these two versions of NES, combining the theoretical robustness of the comprehensive view with the methodological appropriateness of the restrictive one. The autopoietic approach, we show, offers a non-teleological, organism-centered theory of evolution, namely the natural drift theory (NDT), and a grounding on a thermodynamic theory of living beings, namely the embodied autopoietic theory (EAT). We conclude that, from the programmatic point of view, an autopoietic (NDT plus EAT) approach to evolution offers a promising way to develop the NES project.

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“…Walsh's position is contentious, and one I have considered elsewhere (Buskell and Currie 2017). Still, even if one were to take Walsh's argument at face value, one could still be skeptical about its scope: fractionation does not seem to characterize much of evolutionary developmental biology, quantitative genetics, or ecology.…”

Section: Reciprocal Causationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reciprocal Causation and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Buskell

2019

Biol Theory

Self Cite

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Kevin Laland and colleagues have put forward a number of arguments motivating an extended evolutionary synthesis. Here I examine Laland et al.'s central concept of reciprocal causation. Reciprocal causation features in many arguments supporting an expanded evolutionary framework, yet few of these arguments are clearly delineated. Here I clarify the concept and make explicit three arguments in which it features. I identify where skeptics can-and are-pushing back against these arguments, and highlight what I see as the empirical, explanatory, and methodological issues at stake.

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Forces, friction and fractionation: Denis Walsh’s Organisms, agency, and evolution

Cited by 5 publications

References 19 publications

The structure of evolutionary theory: Beyond Neo-Darwinism, Neo-Lamarckism and biased historical narratives about the Modern Synthesis

The structure of evolutionary theory: Beyond Neo-Darwinism, Neo-Lamarckism and biased historical narratives about the Modern Synthesis

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

Reciprocal Causation and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

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