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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2023

From the Modern Synthesis to the other (Extended, Super, Postmodern…) Syntheses

Thierry Hoquet

Résumé

Biology has always been in search for “syntheses”. Darwin’s Origin of species (1859) gave maybe the first attempt to reconcile and think together various fields of biology such as biogeography, embryology, systematics and paleontology. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Modern Synthesis emerged, based on the change of frequency of genes in a population by means of natural selection. The Synthesis unified different biological disciplines (Genetics, Cytology, Embryology, Systematics, Botany, Paleontology, Morphology) and emerged in different countries (USA, Britain, Germany) (Mayr and Provine 1980). However, as the Synthesis was ripening into an orthodox view on the process of organic evolution, several have complained of its “narrowing” and even of its “hardening” (Gould 1983). Several of its features were repeatedly challenged: especially, the gradual approach to evolution, and the use of micro-evolution as a proxy to macro-evolution have been under fire. Major challenges include the neutralist view of mutation (Kimura) and the question of Punctuated Equilibria (Gould and Eldredge). More recently, new experimental data has complemented our views of the development of organisms (evo-devo) and the inheritance of characters (epigenetics). Some claim that, in face of new biological data, the Modern Synthesis Theory of evolution should be rejected, or simply revised or extended.
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Dates et versions

hal-04425811 , version 1 (30-01-2024)

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Thierry Hoquet. From the Modern Synthesis to the other (Extended, Super, Postmodern…) Syntheses. Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes. Understanding Evolution in Darwin's "Origin" The Emerging Context of Evolutionary Thinking, Springer, pp.397-413, 2023, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, 978-3-031-40164-0. ⟨10.1007/97⟩. ⟨hal-04425811⟩
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