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Article ID: CBB001420095

Making the Case for Orthogenesis: The Popularization of Definitely Directed Evolution (1890--1926) (2014)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 45
Pages: 124--132
Publication date: 2014
Language: English

Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section, “Disciplining and Popularizing: Evolution and Its Publics from the Modern Synthesis to the Present”

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Evolution Orthogenesis; orthogenetic evolution Popularization Controversies and disputes 19th century 20th century, early Eimer, Theodor Gustav Heinrich Cope, Edward Drinker Berg, Lev Semenovich

Throughout the history of evolutionary theory a number of scientists have argued that evolution proceeds along a limited number of definite trajectories, a concept and group of theories known as orthogenesis. Beginning in the 1880s, influential evolutionists including Theodor Eimer, Edward Drinker Cope, and Leo Berg argued that a fully causal explanation of evolution must take into account the origin and nature of variation, an idea that implied orthogenesis in their views. This paper argues that these orthogenesis developed theories that were more than highly technical and theoretically dubious hypotheses accessible only to elite specialists, as certain histories of these ideas might suggest. Some orthogenesists made their case to a non-specialist audience to gain support for their ideas in the face of widespread controversy over evolutionary theory. Through a case study analysis of three major books by Eimer, Cope, and Berg, this paper contends that they sought to re-orient the central tenets of the science of evolution to include the causal impact of variation on evolutionary outcomes. These orthogenesists developed novel and synthetic evolutionary theories in a publishing platform suited for non-specialist audiences in an effort to impact the debates over evolutionary causation prevalent in the late-19th and early 20th centuries.

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Article Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty (2014) Disciplining and Popularizing: Evolution and Its Publics from the Modern Synthesis to the Present. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 111). unapi

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