Richard Wein wrote:
>>For purposes of this discussion, could ultra-Darwinists be characterized
>>simply as pure gradualists, as Darwin himself was?
>
>Firstly, I'd like to drop the use of the term "ultra-Darwinians", which I
>consider to be a highly misleading one. Instead I'll refer to the people
>concerned as orthodox neo-Darwinians (as opposed to the punctuated
>equilibrists).
The existence of periods of stasis was surely accepted by Darwin.
The question concerns the nature of evolution between periods of stasis.
Was this evolution so rapid that Darwin's idea of evolution through the
accumulation of "insensible" variations is not acceptable? Or did this
evolution-whatever its speed--indeed occur through a series of very
small steps?
PE theorists have been not at all explicit about this, so I wouldn't say
that PE represents a view opposite to Darwinism.
--Cliff Lundberg ~ San Francisco ~ cliff@noe.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 15 2000 - 03:24:10 EST