Comments on: Gould (1980).

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:53:00 +0000

I and many others inferred from the 1980 paper that he believed the modern synthesis was effectively dead and would be replaced by something more general.

...

Accusing them of not reading the fine print 30 years later is disingenuous. The fine print was not the message, nor I believe, the intent, of the paper.

I did not review the paper in terms of fine print, but of the actual text of the whole paper. I suspect that inferring the meaning, rather than reading the content at face value, was the issue. In any case, this post deals specifically with the issue of whether Gould called for an overthrow of the synthesis (vs. expansion) or tied punk eek to saltationism. A reading of the text of the paper suggests that he did not do this.

By: middle.professor

middle.professor — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Gould’s rhetorical skills were unmatched, except by maybe Lewontin. I and many others inferred from the 1980 paper that he believed the modern synthesis was effectively dead and would be replaced by something more general. One can go back and read the fine print and *maybe* establish that that is not what was technically written. Doesn’t matter. Saltations of some sort and a dead MS is what many, many evolutionary biologists took home from the paper. Accusing them of not reading the fine print 30 years later is disingenuous. The fine print was not the message, nor I believe, the intent, of the paper. – Jeff Walker

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:26:00 +0000

The “right, unoriginal/trivial, and wrong” anonymous – me – is not the same individual as the anonymous earlier on the thread. My bad.

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:52:00 +0000

I dislike speculation on others’ motives, but my impression is that, in general, people find it easy to dismiss inconvenient ideas like hierarchy, non-adaptive mechanisms, and constraints in one pass by painting Gould as a fringe saltationist.

By: Steve Matheson

Steve Matheson — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:47:00 +0000

Why, I wonder, is Mr./Ms. pathetically Anonymous so fixated on this issue? Why is s/he so intent on leveling the accusation (at Gould) at all? Why would someone apparently intelligent enough to understand speciation and cladogenesis employ such ludicrous polemical tactics? Those, I suggest, are interesting questions, as interesting as the questions we all raise concerning evolutionary genetics.

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:39:00 +0000

So speaketh Anonymous.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:37:00 +0000

Gould's contributions can be placed into three categories: right, unoriginal/trivial, and wrong.

Right:
- Species sorting
- Revival of interest in heterochrony (not original, but important at the time)

Unoriginal/trivial:
- Punctuated equilibrium (stasis, geologically instant speciation were long known)
- Exaptation (used to be known as preadaptation)
- Developmental constraints (unoriginal, other contemporaries doing work in the area)

Wrong:
- Humans are neotenic apes (This has simply been falsified)
- Got carried away with allometry (kiwi egg explanation - wrong, calculating robust australopithecene size - wrong)

Gould's ranking: around the area of EO Wilson and Richard Dawkins (popularizers with a couple of good ideas) but below the rank of a Margulis or Trivers

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:17:00 +0000

We can certainly talk about punk eek more broadly and whether it has changed since first proposed (it probably has, though less, I suspect, than the “Modern Synthesis” has). My point, to reiterate, was to discuss this specific paper and whether he tied punk eek to saltational speciation or not.

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Of course I am not saying that Gould would not have been fine with saltational speciation if it turned out to be common. Obviously this would have been compatible with the larger issues he described in terms of non-adaptive species origins and species sorting. But that does not mean he claimed that punk eek in particular required saltational genetic causation.

By: T Ryan Gregory

T Ryan Gregory — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:08:00 +0000

On the other hand, our mystery friend appears to be correct when he says that both sympatric and allopatric speciation are compatible with punctuated equilibria. They specifically mention this in their 1972 paper on page 94, just before they go on to discuss the implications of allopatric theory.

Fair enough. I should have been clearer -- saltational sympatric speciation has nothing to do with punk eek, which is usually described in terms of peripheral isolates. However, saltationism, if it does happen (obviously) would not conflict with a pattern of "rapid" speciation followed by stasis.