Evolution - The Extended Synthesis

In the six decades since the publication of Julian Huxley's Evolution: The ModernSynthesis, the spectacular empirical advances in the biological sciences have been accompanied byequally significant developments within the core theoretical framework of the discipline. As aresult, evolutionary theory today includes concepts and even entire new fields that were not part ofthe foundational structure of the Modern Synthesis. In this volume, sixteen leading evolutionarybiologists and philosophers of science survey the conceptual changes that have emerged sinceHuxley's landmark publication, not only in such traditional domains of evolutionary biology asquantitative genetics and paleontology but also in such new fields of research as genomics andEvoDevo. Most of the contributors to Evolution -- The Extended Synthesis accept many of the tenetsof the classical framework but want to relax some of its assumptions and introduce significantconceptual augmentations of the basic Modern Synthesis structure--just as the architects of theModern Synthesis themselves expanded and modulated previous versions of Darwinism. This continuingrevision of a theoretical edifice the foundations of which were laid in the middle of the nineteenthcentury--the reexamination of old ideas, proposals of new ones, and the synthesis of the mostsuitable--shows us how science works, and how scientists have painstakingly built a solid set ofexplanations for what Darwin called the "grandeur" of life.Contributors John Beatty,Werner Callebaut, Jeremy Draghi, Chrisantha Fernando, Sergey Gavrilets, John C. Gerhart, EvaJablonka, David Jablonski, Marc W. Kirschner, Marion J. Lamb, Alan C. Love, Gerd B. Muller, StuartA. Newman, John Odling-Smee, Massimo Pigliucci, Michael Purugganan, Eors Szathmary, Gunter P.Wagner, David Sloan Wilson, Gregory A. Wray

Massimo Pigliucci is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York.