Evolution
Volume 61 Issue 12, Pages 2743 - 2749
Published Online: 15 Sep 2007
© 2010, Society for the Study of Evolution
Massimo Pigliucci 1
1 Department of Ecology & Evolution, Stony Brook University, 650 Life Science Bldg., Stony Brook New York 11794 E-mail:pigliucci@genotypebyenvironment.org
Associate Editor: M. Rausher
KEYWORDS
Epigenetic inheritance • evolutionary novelties • extended evolutionary synthesis • Modern Synthesis • paradigm shift • phenotypic plasticity
ABSTRACT
The Modern Synthesis (MS) is the current paradigm in evolutionary biology. It was actually built by expanding on the conceptual foundations laid out by its predecessors, Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. For sometime now there has been talk of a new Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), and this article begins to outline why we may need such an extension, and how it may come about. As philosopher Karl Popper has noticed, the current evolutionary theory is a theory of genes, and we still lack a theory of forms. The field began, in fact, as a theory of forms in Darwin's days, and the major goal that an EES will aim for is a unification of our theories of genes and of forms. This may be achieved through an organic grafting of novel concepts onto the foundational structure of the MS, particularly evolvability, phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic inheritance, complexity theory, and the theory of evolution in highly dimensional adaptive landscapes.
Received August 15, 2007
Accepted August 16, 2007
DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)10.1111/j.1558-5646.2007.00246.x
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