Mutation and evolution

Category: Curious Disconnect

  • The Curious Disconnect: Introduction

    This is a far-too-long introduction to a blog series that I started in 2010.  Now I’m ready to start it up again.  The themes will still be the same— but hopefully I have learned a bit about stating things more succinctly. Striking a chord The title of this blog — The…

  • When “Darwinian adaptation” is neither

    Getting stuff right Early in the evolution of the Sequence Ontology, it was noted (by gadflies like myself) that SO asserts the relationship of mRNA to gene to be the “part of” relationship.  This is obviously wrong.  An RNA molecule is not part of a DNA molecule.   Saying that mRNA is part of a gene is like…

  • The Great Non-Debate on Evolutionary Theory (Nature, Oct 2014)

    Some of you may have noticed a recent exchange in Nature on the question of whether evolutionary biology needs a re-think. The online article does not make clear the alignments of the listed authors, but those arguing in favor of a re-think are: Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller, Marc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka,…

  • Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (book review)

    Last year I read James Shapiro’s Evolution: A View from the 21st Century (2013, FT Press) along with 2 other recent books, Nei’s Mutation-Driven Evolution and Koonin’s The Logic of Chance.  All 3 fall into the category of recent books by seasoned researchers whose primary focus is molecular, and who argue that…

  • Theory vs. Theory

    What does it mean to invoke “evolutionary theory”? Is “neo-Darwinism” (or “Darwinism”) a theory, a school of thought, or something else? What gives a theory structure and meaning?  Can a theory change and, if so, how much?  What is the relationship between mathematical formalisms and other statements of “theory”? Who…

  • The Mutationism Myth (2): Revolution

    Our journey began with The Mutationism Myth, part 1.  Then, in Theory vs Theory, we took a brief detour to distinguish theoryC (concrete, conjectural) from theoryA (abstract, analytical).  Today we are back to the Mutationism Myth and our goal is to probe its claim that the scientific community rejected Darwin’s…

  • The Mutationism Myth (1): The Monk’s Lost Code and the Great Confusion

    This is the first in a series of blogs first published in 2010 on Sandwalk. The mutationism myth tells the story of how, just over a century ago, the scientific community responded to the discovery of Mendelian genetics by discarding Darwinism, and how Darwinism subsequently was restored.  In this, the…

  • Re-reading Provine (1971), part 1

    Will Provine‘s seminal work of history, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (1971), recounts how the foundations of modern neo-Darwinism were established in the first 2 decades of the 20th century.  Superficially, Provine’s book aligns with the standard triumphalist narrative in which the architects of the Modern Synthesis combine selection and genetics to yield a workable…

  • The Mutationism Myth (6): Back to the Future

    This post wraps up a 6-part series on the Mutationism Myth (a more scholarly version of this material ended being published in J. Hist. Biol. by Stoltzfus and Cable, 2014), and sets the stage for the future by locating the primary weakness of the 20th century neo-Darwinian consensus in its theory of variation.

  • Mutationism Myth (5): The Restoration

    This is the 5th in a series of 2010 blogs entitled “The Mutationism Myth” (a more scholarly version of this material ended being published in J. Hist. Biol. by Stoltzfus and Cable, 2014) The Mutationism Myth, part 5. The Restoration In the Mutationism Myth (see part 1), the Modern Synthesis (MS) rescues evolutionary biology from the…