The Fate of the Method of ‘Paradigms’ in Paleobiology

Abstract

Abstract. An earlier article described the mid-twentieth century origins of the method of ''paradigms'' in paleobiology, as a way of making testable hypotheses about the functional morphology of extinct organisms. The present article describes the use of ''paradigms'' through the 1970s and, briefly, to the end of the century. After I had proposed the paradigm method to help interpret the ecological history of brachiopods, my students developed it in relation to that and other invertebrate phyla, notably in Euan Clarkson's analysis of vision in trilobites. David Raup's computer-aided ''theoretical morphology'' was then combined with my functional or adaptive emphasis, in Adolf Seilacher's tripartite ''constructional morphology.'' Stephen Jay Gould, who had strongly endorsed the method, later switched to criticizing the ''adaptationist program'' he claimed it embodied. Although the explicit use of paradigms in paleobiology had declined by the end of the century, the method was tacitly subsumed into functional morphology as ''biomechanics.''

Convergence, parallelism, and function of extreme parietal callus in diverse groups of Cenozoic Gastropoda

“…The appearance of a feature in distantly related clades is typically taken as indicative of an adaptive response (notwithstanding exceptions; e.g., Gould and Lewontin 1979; Anderson and Allmon 2018 and references therein), though this observation does not necessarily provide evidence of the possible function(s) (Geary et al 2002; Tseng 2013). Directly establishing utility through hypothesis formation and experimentation (the “paradigm method” [Rudwick 2018]; e.g., Arnold 1983; Wainwright and Reilly 1994) may help determine whether the feature under investigation is indeed adaptive, exaptive, or nonaptive, and if it is adaptive, how selection may have acted to establish the feature (Wake 1991; Wake et al 2011). The ecological context can also help determine the function of a feature by identifying what environments selected for that feature (e.g., Harvey and Pagel 1991; Vermeij 2002; Gemmell et al 2018).…”

Un pluralisme modéré pour le temps des sciences de la nature : irréversibilité et échelles de temps dans les disciplines biologiques

“…Be that as it may, the incorporation of morphology into the synthesis was a later development." (Ghiselin, 2006) For the sake of brevity, I will concentrate on the work of these few individuals, although they were not the only ones to apply a functional approach to the study of evolutionary novelties in that period 74 For example, there were related developments of the approach of functional morphology in invertebrate paleontology, such as the method of "paradigms" aimed at inferring the functions of fossil characters from their structures and thus their ways of life (Rudwick, 1964) This research program was primarily focused on functional analysis independently of evolutionary considerations, but it was also applied to trace the evolution of echinoderms or brachiopods (Nichols, 1967;Rudwick, 1970) 75  This functional approach in paleontology was first advocated by Stephen Jay Gould (Gould, 1970) before his later turn against adaptationism (Gould and Lewontin, 1979; see Rudwick, 2017Rudwick, , 2018 Although I will not provide an extensive review here, I will give a few other examples of the use of functional morphology to infer the evolution of higher taxa and new characters These studies did not all use the concepts of preadaptation and functional shift in their explanations but manifest a common trend in methods and theoretical commitments the origin of the heatsensing pit organ of pit vipers (Dullemeijer, 1959) the evolution of the head in a teleost fish (Liem, 1967) of tail autotomy in salamanders (Wake and Dresner, 1967) the origin of the mammalian lower jaw (Crompton and Parkyn, 1963) of the jaw of bolyerine snakes (Frazzetta, 1975(Frazzetta, , 1970 the origin of the coelom (Gutmann, 1966; see Gudo, 2002) of wings and flight in insects (Flower, 1964;Wigglesworth, 1973Wigglesworth, , 1963; of the insect ovipositor (Scudder, 1964(Scudder, , 1961; of the protrusile tongue in salamanders (Lombard and Wake, 1977, 1976 see Griesemer, 2013 the evolution of characters in arthropods, such as those associated with locomotion (Manton, 1972…”