>>Gould's review came very close to repudiating Darwinism
>in favor of a concept of 'evolution' that resembles the pre-Darwinian
>catastrophism of George Cuvier. I wrote to Gould after this review to
>suggest that he is no more of a Darwinist than I am, and that he
>refuses to acknowledge this only because he fears the metaphysical
>consequences. He did not answer." (pp 227-228)
>
I am currently reading a book that has previously been mentioned on the
reflector: "Reinventing Darwin: The great debate at the high table of
evolution theory" by Niles Eldredge. Eldredge delineates the areas of
disagreement between "adaptationists" (essentially this is the group which
considers natural selection to be the only driving force of any consequence
in evolution and believes population genetics can pretty much explain all
of evolution) and "naturalists" -- mostly paleontologists, including
Eldredge and Gould, who contend that the fossil record does not support the
models of evolution which result from a pure application of population
genetics. There are some sharp disagreements, to be sure, but Eldredge,
and Gould so far as I know, consider themselves Darwinists. It seems to me
that Phil may be trying to hold all evolutionists to a "Darwinian
orthodoxy" which is acknowledged by the population genetics community byt
not by the naturalists.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
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