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But Not Wright Enough: Reply to Orzack

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould*
Affiliation:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
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Extract

As The Blob, of Steve McQueen's greatest triumph, so amply demonstrated, the more you encompass the more formless you become. Orzack accuses me of construing the modern synthesis too narrowly in describing a version championed only by Mayr and Fisher—a pair of unlikely bedfellows, I would have thought. Yet his version is so broad that he wins his own argument by internal definition, thus rendering it meaningless. As “the basis of the modern synthesis,” Orzack cites “the great evolutionary idea” — “all evolution can be explained in principle by an examination of the properties of individuals and of populations.” But what else is there, except perhaps Schindewolf's supernovae and Teilhard's ever-watchful Jesus, drawing organic activity towards Omega. If the synthesis only excludes some fringing finalists and unrepentant Lamarckians, then we are all inevitably in it, and we might as well recast the term as a synonym for evolution itself.

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Articles
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Paleobiology , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Winter 1981 , pp. 131 - 134
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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