Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory
Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory OTHER ARTICLES An insider's provocative account of one of the most contentious debates in science today When Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, two of the world's leading evolutionary theorists, proposed a bold new theory of evolution--the theory of punctuated equilibria--they stood the standard interpretation of Darwin on its head. They also ignited a furious debate about the true nature of evolution.On the one side are the geneticists. They contend that evolution proceeds slowly but surely, driven by competition among organisms to transmit their genes from generation to generation. On the other are the paleontologists, like Eldredge and Gould, who show in the fossil record that in fact evolution proceeds only sporadically. Long periods of no change--equilibria--are punctuated by episodes of rapid evolutionary activity...