Paradigm Change
As my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position—namely at the close of the introduction—the following words: “I am convinced that natural selection has been the main, but not the exclusive means of modification.” This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misinterpretation.
— Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1872, p. 395, Cited in Gould 1979
This is the age of the evolution of Evolution. All thoughts that the Evolutionist works with, all theories and generalizations, have themselves evolved and are now being evolved. Even were his theory perfected, its first lesson would be that it was itself but a phase of the Evolution of other opinion, no more fixed than a species, no more final than the theory which it displaced.
— Henry Drummond, 1883, Cited in Reid 2007
Natural selection is a sieve. It creates nothing, as is so often assumed; it only sifts. It retains only what variability puts into the sieve. Whence the material comes that is put into it, should be kept separate from the theory of its selection. How the struggle for existence sifts is one question; how that which is sifted arose is another.
— Hugo de Vries, The Mutation Theory, De Vries 1907.
On the evening of 28th December 1921 in Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto, Bateson gave the plenary addressed — “Evolutionary Faith and Modern Doubts.”
I have put before you very frankly the considerations which have made us agnostic as to the actual mode and processes of evolution. When such confessions are made the enemies of science [ID-Creationists] see their chance. If we cannot declare here and now how species arose, they will obligingly offer us the solutions with which obscurantism is satisfied. Let us then proclaim in precise and unmistaken language that our faith in evolution is unshaken…. Our doubts are not as to the reality of evolution, but as to the origin of species, a technical, almost domestic, problem. Any day that mystery may be solved.
— William Bateson, 1921, Cited in Cock 2008
In short, although natural selection, like death and taxes, is always with us it no more explains evolution than death explains life nor taxes explain the production of wealth.
— Robert G. B. Reid, The Unfinished Synthesis, Reid 1985
… though natural selection had been proved to exist, and ’selection pressure’ shown to be more significant than ‘mutation pressure’ in cases examined, …. [it had not] been proved that natural selection was the cause of evolution. Allowing that it was the efficient cause of population changes, its position as a cause of evolution was based on the Darwinian supposition that the causes of population variations were also the causes of speciation and phylogenesis. Logically and scientifically this was no sounder than the Lamarkist belief that inheritance of acquired characteristics had to be the cause of evolution because it was the only one that made sense. Re-definition of evolution as frequency changes in the distribution of alleles in populations, and appeals to authority and to the consensus of the majority of biologists covered the omission.
— Robert G. B. Reid, The Unfinished Synthesis, Reid 1985
There is scientific controversy concerning the details of mechamisms and patterns of evolution, but not over whether the universe has had a history measured in billions of years, nor over whether living things share a common ancestory.
(….) There is a robust argument among evolutionary biologists over how new body plans or major new morphological features arose. No one disputes the importance of natural selection: it affects the genetic variation in populations, which may be the basis for a new species (in conjunction with isolating mechanisms). All parties likewise recognize the possibility or even likelihood of other biological mechanisms affecting morphological features that distinguish major groups of organisms. The issue in evolutionary biology is how and how much natural selection and other microevolutionary processes are supplemented by other mechanisms (such as regulatory genes operating early in embryological development).
— Eugenie C. Scott, Evolution vs. Creationism, Scott 2004
The homologies of process within morphogenetic fields provide some of the best evidence for evolution — just as skeletal and organ homologies did earlier. Thus, the evidence for evolution is better than ever. The role of natural selection in evolution, however, is seen to play less an important role. It is merely a filter for unsuccessful morphologies generated by development. Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics.
— S. F. Gilbert, J.M. Opitz, and R. A. Raff (1996)
The three authors of this rather gloomy passage are among the leaders of a new subfield of evolutionary studies known as “evolutionary development” (or “evo-devo” for short). They represent the opinions of a sizable number of today’s thinkers who believe that new developments in biological thinking represent a significant contraction of the scope and power of natural selection.
— Michael Ruse, Darwinism and Its Discontents, Ruse 2006
These are exciting days for evolutionary biology. In the past twenty years or so, the molecular approach to biology—evolutionary development, or more familiarly, “evo-devo”—has swept all before it. Now we can trace development from the gene to the finished organism. Along the way, some magnificent discoveries have been made, most significantly that organisms as different as the fruit fly and the human share hugely important genes for development. We humans are put together in the same way as are those little insects that hang around compost heaps and rotting vegetables in garbage cans. This has led some enthusiasts to think that we are on the verge of—certainly in need of—a whole new theory of evolution. A new paradigm, that rejects Darwinian natural selection, or at least reduces it to an unimportant role in cleaning up after the real work has been done. Now we have or are after a new theory—perhaps one that makes the really creative work appear in the course of development. Nature unfurls according to its molecularly based developmental laws, and that is where the real sources of change should be sought. It is true that the fittest survive, but this is little more than a truism with no evolutionary import.
— Michael Ruse, Defining Darwin, Ruse 2009
If natural selection is taken to be an obstacle to progressive evolution (in the sense of increased self-organizing complexity), a start from scratch, beyond the mortemain of Darwin, is demanded. When asked “If you are going to reject natural selection as the cause of evolution, what are you going to put in its place?” I am tempted to answer that selection theory has never offered a logical generative theory of progressive evolution, so there is nothing that requires replacement. But to be less of a dog in the manger, I suggest that what causes innovative variation causes evolution, and that these phenomena, though sometimes elusive, are natural events that happen within the organism as well as without.
— Robert G. B. Reid, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, Reid 2007
Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing. Natural selection as a natural force belongs in the insubstantial category already populated by the Becker/Stahl phlogiston or Newton’s “ether.” ….
Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge vulnerable targets.
— William B. Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics, Provine 2001
The evolution of life on Earth is a fact that by consensus is accepted in modern biology. However, the biological community is polarized in regard to the mechanisms of biological evolution. On the one hand, is the prevalent view that evolution of the living world is determined by changes in genes and gene frequencies, and on the other, a new, less powerful, but already significant and rapidly crystallizing concept, holding that nongenetic, epigenetic factors and mechanisms, also play an important role in the evolution of life.
— Nelson R. Cabej, Epigenetic Principles of Evolution, Cabej 2008
The current focus of attention on the legacy of Charles Darwin may have unfortunate consequences if it obscures the extent to which the development of evolutionism has been shaped by other factors. Non-Darwinian theories of evolution were widely accepted in the late nineteenth century and focused attention on conceptual issues that have now been reopened by evolutionary developmental biology.
— Peter J. Bowler, Do we need a non-Darwinian industry?, Cited in Bowler 2009
We are entering exciting times in Biology. We might call this the age of post-natural selection evolutionary biology, in other words, a kind of post-modernism for the natural sciences. The Darwinian fixation on natural selection and its consequent pan-selectionism ahve proved inadequate for the demands placed upon them, and now we must look elsewhere for a fuller understanding of the evolutionary process. A paradigm shift of the first order is in the process, making this an especially good time to review our understanding of the scientific process as we seek a way forward.
— Mark A. S. McMenamin, Cited in Pivar 2009
Before Darwin, natural history (biology) was divided into two disciplines: morphology (shape) and physiology (function). These were neatly separate until Darwin suggested that one causes the other. This mind-boggling idea has been the basis of the inquiry into the cause, or causes, of evolution and of vigorous contention among scientists that continues today. The debate is not over whether evolution took place, but over its primary mechanism.
(….) This problem is exacerbated by the use of the term “Darwinism” by some writers who use it interchangeably for both the fact of evolution by modified descent, well known to society in Darwin’s time, and natural selection, the mechanism proposed by Darwin to account for it. All scientists believe in evolution. Many believe that natural selection plays a lesser, editorial role in its working mechanism. Paleontologist Stephen Gould called those who champion natural selection and adaptation as the sole mechanism of evolution “Darwin Fundamentalists.”
— Stuart Pivar, On the Origin of Form, Pivar 2009
Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents correctly state that natural selection does not provide a complete account for evolution, from which they falsely conclude that evolution never happened.
— Stuart Pivar, On the Origin of Form, Pivar 2009