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Staunch Darwinists such as Dennett claim that punctuated equilibrium is a saltationist theory because they know that what Gould had proposed was completely incompatible with the Darwinian mechanism.
I don't think you can "improve" evolution with such a dubious alternative to Darwinism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that saltationism is about the magnitude of individual changes, while punk eek is concerned with the rate(s, and variation thereof) at which multiple changes follow each other.
Originally Posted by LifeToTheFullest!
You have no idea what punk eek is! It fits nicely with neo-Darwinianism.
" In the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species Darwin wrote that "the periods during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured in years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form."
emphasis mine
Wow. I knew I read something that sounded an awful lot like PE in Origin, but I didn't remember this part. Then again, I read the first edition, so maybe this wasn't there.
(Did you mean neo-Darwinism? )
Originally Posted by marlowe007
Hmmm... I always thought Darwin was a gradualist.
Gradualism doesn't mean that the rate of evolution is constant, it means that individual evolutionary steps are small. At least that's how I understand it.
__________________ "There is much we do not understand about the history of life, and the same will be true of our grandchildren. But, then, if we knew all there was to know, scientific interest would cease. Textbooks may portray science as a codification of facts, but it is really a disciplined way of asking about the unknown." - A.H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet
"Come on, put your bloody thinking caps on!" - Dr Tony Prave, geology lecture
And most really don't understand punk eek. The "puncuated" part refers to something like 60 million years, as opposed to 120 myrs.
Well, no, that isn't right either. The theory is about changes in and between species, and it posits that most phenotypic change happens around the time of speciation, during a time small compared to the life of the species. Since species typically last a couple of million years, the punctuated part has to be a lot shorter than 60 million years.
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Linear Mode
