The Darwinian Tradition in Context

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

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2. Introduction: Darwinism or a Kaleidoscope of Research Programs and Ideas?

   • Richard G. Delisle

   Pages 1-8

3. From a Pluralistic Darwinism to an Ever More Inclusive Darwinism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9

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   2. Selfish Genes and Lucky Breaks: Richard Dawkins’ and Stephen Jay Gould’s Divergent Darwinian Agendas

      • Timothy Shanahan

      Pages 11-36

   3. The Behavioral Sciences and Sociobiology: A Darwinian Approach

      • John Alcock

      Pages 37-59

   4. Darwinism in the Twentieth Century: Productive Encounters with Saltation, Acquired Characteristics, and Development

      • David J. Depew

      Pages 61-88

   5. Darwinism After the Modern Synthesis

      • Massimo Pi+gliucci

      Pages 89-103

   6. Human Evolution as a Theoretical Model for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

      • Adam Van Arsdale

      Pages 105-130

4. Crossing the Boundaries: Between Non-Darwinian and Darwinian

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131

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   2. From Charles Darwin to the Evolutionary Synthesis: Weak and Diffused Connections Only

      • Richard G. Delisle

      Pages 133-167

   3. Major Research Traditions in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology: The Relations of Germany’s Darwinism with Them

      • Georgy S. Levit, Uwe Hoßfeld

      Pages 169-193

   4. Alternatives to Darwinism in the Early Twentieth Century

      • Peter J. Bowler

      Pages 195-217

   5. The Organismal Synthesis: Holistic Science and Developmental Evolution in the English-Speaking World, 1915–1954

      • Maurizio Esposito

      Pages 219-241

   6. Lamarckian Research Programs in French Biology (1900–1970)

      • Laurent Loison, Emily Herring

      Pages 243-269

   7. Molecularizing Evolutionary Biology

      • Michel Morange

      Pages 271-288

   8. Cells, Development, and Evolution: Teeth Studies at the Intersection of Fields

      • Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein

      Pages 289-308

   9. Symbiogenesis and Cell Evolution: An Anti-Darwinian Research Agenda?

      • Ulrich Kutschera

      Pages 309-331

   10. Paleobiology’s Uneasy Relationship with the Darwinian Tradition: Stasis as Data

       • Derek D. Turner

       Pages 333-352

The main goal of this book is to put the Darwinian tradition in context by raising questions such as: How should it be defined? Did it interact with other research programs? Were there any research programs that developed largely independently of the Darwinian tradition? Accordingly, the contributing authors explicitly explore the nature of the relationship between the Darwinian tradition and other research programs running in parallel.

In the wake of the Synthetic Theory of Evolution, which was established throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, historians and philosophers of biology devoted considerable attention to the Darwinian tradition, i.e., linking Charles Darwin to mid-Twentieth-Century developments in evolutionary biology. Since then, more recent developments in evolutionary biology have challenged, in part or entirely, the heritage of the Darwinian tradition. Not surprisingly, this has in turn been followed by a historiographical “recalibration” on the part of historians and philosophers regarding other research programs and traditions in evolutionary biology. In order to acknowledge this shift, the papers in this book have been arranged on the basis of two main threads:

Part I: A perspective that views Darwinism as either being originally pluralistic or having acquired such a pluralistic nature through modifications and borrowings over time.

Part II: A perspective blurring the boundaries between non-Darwinian and Darwinian traditions, either by contending that Darwinism itself was never quite as Darwinian as previously assumed, or that non-Darwinian traditions took on board various Darwinian components, when not fertilizing Darwinism directly.

Between a Darwinism reaching out to other research programs and non-Darwinian programs reaching out to Darwinism, the least that can be said is that this interweaving of intellectual threads blurs the historiographical field. This volume aims to open vital new avenues for approaching and reflecting on the development of evolutionary biology.

• Darwinian Tradition
• Darwinism
• evolutionary biology
• Developmental biology
• Evolutionary Synthesis
• Neo-lamarckism
• Thermodynamics and self-organization

“Delisle (philosophy, Univ. of Lethbridge, UK) has edited an insightful new volume on the history and philosophy of science. … Contributors to this volume include historians and philosophers of evolutionary biology, and they provide insights on how the research and discoveries of the past are presented or represented in historiographical perspectives. This reference would be useful in libraries that support programs in the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. Summing Up: Recommended.” (K. M. Foos, Choice, Vol. 56 (2), October, 2018)

• Departments of Liberal Education and Philosophy, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Canada

  Richard G. Delisle

Professor Richard G. Delisle Departments of Philosophy and Liberal Education University of Lethbridge 4401 University Drive Lethbridge, Alberta Canada T1K 3M4 Phone: + (403) 380-1861 Email: richard.delisle@uleth.ca Prof. Delisle has organized the following edited volumes, as guest editor of three distinct special issues published in well-known journals in the area of the history and philosophy of science: 2014: Charles Darwin and Scientific Revolutions. 12 papers published as a special issue of the American journal "Endeavour", under my editorship (Guest Editor), Volume 38, No. 3-4 (September/December). 2012: Human Evolution Across Disciplines: Through the Looking Glass of History and Epistemology. 13 papers published as a special volume of the Italian journal "History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences", under my editorship (Guest Editor), Volume 34, No. 1-2 (March/June). 2011: Defining Darwinism: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Debate. 14 articles published as a special volume of the British journal "Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences", under my editorship (Guest Editor), Volume 42, No. 1 (March).

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