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7 - Time for a Change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2022

Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
University of Guelph, Ontario
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Summary

Turn now to those who think natural selection is vastly overrated as a cause of evolutionary change. It is at best a clean-up process after the real creative work has been done. It is little surprise that these critics come from within the organismic model, implicitly or explicitly. At the scientific level, we have encountered already the most (and properly) distinguished of them all, the American population geneticist Sewall Wright. Remember his “shifting balance theory,” where the key lay in genetic drift, as gene levels fluctuated randomly in small subpopulations, and then, when new adaptive features appeared, the subpopulations rejoined the larger group (probably the species), and through a form of group selection the new feature spread through the whole group. This is highly Spencerian – infused with a solid dose of Bergsonian vitalism – as equilibrium is disturbed and then regained at a higher level, part of an overall progressive process, presumably ending in humankind.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Time for a Change?
  • Michael Ruse, University of Guelph, Ontario
  • Book: Understanding Natural Selection
  • Online publication: 09 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090865.009
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  • Time for a Change?
  • Michael Ruse, University of Guelph, Ontario
  • Book: Understanding Natural Selection
  • Online publication: 09 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090865.009
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Time for a Change?
  • Michael Ruse, University of Guelph, Ontario
  • Book: Understanding Natural Selection
  • Online publication: 09 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009090865.009
Available formats
×