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Article ID: CBB001023984

Darwinism after Mendelism: The Case of Sewall Wright's Intellectual Synthesis in His Shifting Balance Theory of Evolution (1931) (2011)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 42
Pages: 30--39
Publication date: 2011
Language: English

Publication Date: 2011
Edition Details: Part of a special issue, “Defining Darwinism: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Debate”

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Evolution Darwinism Biology Mendelism; Mendelian inheritance Population genetics 20th century, early Wright, Sewall

Historians of science have long been agreeing: what many textbooks of evolutionary biology say, about the histories of Darwinism and the New Synthesis, is just too simple to do justice to the complexities revealed to critical scholarship and historiography. There is no current consensus, however, on what grand narratives should replace those textbook histories. The present paper does not offer to contribute directly to any grand, consensual, narrational goals; but it does seek to do so indirectly by showing how, in just one individual case, details of intellectual biography connect with big picture issues. To this end, I examine here how very diverse scientific and metaphysical commitments were integrated in Sewall Wright's own personal synthesis of biology and philosophy. Taking as the decisive text the short final section of Wright's long 1931 paper on `Evolution in Mendelian populations,' I examine how his shifting balance theory (SBT) related to his optimum breeding strategy research, his physiological genetics, his general theory of homogenising and heterogenesing causation and his panpsychist view of mind and matter; and I discuss how understanding these relations can clarify Wright's place in the longue durée of evolutionary thought.

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Article Hull, David L. (2011) Defining Darwinism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 2). unapi

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