An evolutionary no man’s land

American Scientist, 1997

Economic historians make a useful distinction between inventions and innovations (inven- tions that succeed within an economy). Applying this distinction to the evolutionary novelties of the Cambrian metazoan radiation suggests many developmental inventions were necessary but insufficient as causes for the breadth of the diversification. Comparative developmental studies of modern animals are providing a detailed window into these developmental inven- tions, with the protostome-deuterostome ancestor, or urbilaterian, occupying a critical node at the origin of the bilaterian clades. Highly conserved developmental elements between verte- brates and arthropods indicate that there was considerable developmental complexity at this node, but the level of morphological complexity remains disputed. Such inventions do not, however, seem sufficient to generate the morphological breadth of the radiation of body plans. Here the primary factor was likely the construction of new ecospace through positive ecolog- ical feedback.

This dissertation brings a contribution to the philosophical debate on adaptive landscapes, an influent "model" or "metaphor" in evolutionary biology. Some elements of innovation are: the distinction between native and migrant metaphor; a processual and communicational idea on what the Modern Synthesis was, and on what role a metaphor could have played in it; a view (taken by Richard Lewontin) of the disunity and theoretical structure of population genetics; the distinction between “adaptive surfaces” (mainly metaphors) and “combination spaces”, two terms normally conflated in the word “landscape”; an analysis of what bridges (including heuristics) may be cast between equations of gene frequency and the genotype space that, due to its huge dimensionality, cannot be handled by mathematics; a specified vocabulary to be used to clear the adaptive landscapes debate, accompanied by a plea in favor of a pragmatic approach - for example, the plurality of available notions of model forces us to choose one notion and see where it brings, otherwise we get stuck in confused, endless debates; an updated analytical comment of recent landscapes - Dobzhansky, Simpson, Dawkins but also the proliferation of combination spaces used in evolutionary biology to address a great variety of problems; the vision (got by Sergey Gavrilets) of a patchwork of tools finally making Mendelian population suitable model also for speciation; the exact position of holey landscapes in this patchwork, and the idea that scientists’s questions - like “how possibly” questions - matter in accessing this patchwork and in deciding “what explains” and “what describes” what in the world; the direct response to some mistakes Massimo Pigliucci made, I think, in his assessment of the adaptive landscape; an analysis of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis project at its present stage, and some reflections on the conditions that will allow such a project to give a fair treatment and a good position to tools from the past, like the adaptive landscapes. Keywords: evolution, biology, philosophy of science, model, metaphor, synthesis, adaptive or fitness landscapes, surfaces, visualization, dobzhansky, simpson, dawkins, gavrilets, j huxley, pigliucci, modern and extended evolutionary synthesis, population genetics, mendelian combination space

Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2015

Scientific activities take place within the structured sets of ideas and assumptions that define a field and its practices. The conceptual framework of evolutionary biology emerged with the Modern Synthesis in the early twentieth century and has since expanded into a highly successful research program to explore the processes of diversification and adaptation. Nonetheless, the ability of that framework satisfactorily to accommodate the rapid advances in developmental biology, genomics and ecology has been questioned. We review some of these arguments, focusing on literatures (evo-devo, developmental plasticity, inclusive inheritance and niche construction) whose implications for evolution can be interpreted in two ways-one that preserves the internal structure of contemporary evolutionary theory and one that points towards an alternative conceptual framework. The latter, which we label the 'extended evolutionary synthesis' (EES), retains the fundaments of evolutionary theory...

I present the initiatives, papers, and ideas of Pigliucci, Müller, and others, who are proposing an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). I then advance some reasons for concern raised by those claims, including uncertainties in timing, historical inaccuracies, lack of a theoretical structure, arbitrariness and instability of the included concepts, stereotypical characterization of the Modern Synthesis, and dissent among evolutionary biologists. Then I mention the studies by historian of the Modern Synthesis, Joe Cain, who is very detailed and careful in explaining that Mayr, Dobzhansky, Huxley & co. who claimed they were part of a Modern Synthesis, they did also for strategic and political reasons, related to their own careers and to more general cultural battles of the time. What I want to argue is not that the Modern Synthesis was an invented product of a marketing operation; rather, it is that the social and interactive dynamics of science are very important in understanding what is going on. The same could be true for the EES in our years. I maintain the primary importance of understanding how biology is today, how it has changed, what future expects us. Pigliucci's question, "Do we need an EES?", thus suggests very important issues. But I propose that we shouldn't take at face value what the protagonists of evolutionary biology see and say. The 'expert review' or the 'small group of architects' methods cannot work. No solution either comes from a traditional philosophical approach of 'describing the structure of evolutionary theory', because scientists don't work 'inside' theories; they use them in different ways. Correct methods for answering could be developed, with the help of advanced technology for analyzing the scientific literature, the ways of doing science, the 'hot topics', the birth and death of fields, etc., through time. This would mean to look seriously at the scientific community, avoiding, on t he one hand, the authority principle, and, on the other hand, the surrender to an 'all flows, everything ever changes' perspective. In the context of such an endeavour, I suggest a specific look at the Italian evolutionary biology community as important for the future prospects of this science in our country.

Developmental Biology, 2011

BioScience, 2012

2010

Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 2011

Search Methodologies, 2005