Adaptationism is the view that all or most traits are optimal adaptations. The critics (most notably Richard Lewontin and Stephen J. Gould) contend that the adaptationsists (John Maynard Smith, W.D. Hamilton and Richard Dawkins being frequent examples) have over-emphasized the power of natural selection to have shape individual traits to an evolutionary optimum, and ignored the role of developmental contraints, and other factors to explain extant morphological and behavioural traits. In biology, a trait or character is a genetically inherited feature of an organism. ... In mathematics, the term optimization refers to the study of problems that have the form Given: a function f : A R from some set A to the real numbers Sought: an element x0 in A such that f(x0) ≤ f(x) for all x in A (minimization) or such that... The eye is an adaptation. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ... Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was a New York-born American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. ... John Maynard Smith Professor John Maynard Smith, F.R.S. (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British evolutionary biologist and geneticist. ... This article is about the British biologist Bill Hamilton. ... Richard Dawkins Clinton Richard Dawkins FRS (known as Richard Dawkins; born March 26, 1941) is a British ethologist and popular science writer. ... Natural selection is the metaphor Charles Darwin used in 1859 to name the process he postulated to drive the adaptation of organisms to their environments and the origin of new species. ... A speculatively rooted phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, as described initially by Carl Woese. ...

Adaptationists are accused by their critics of using ad-hoc "Just So Stories" to make their theories unfalsifiable. The critics are often been accused of attacking straw men, rather than the actual views of supposed adapatationists. Many putative adaptationists do not dispute that the alternative explanations advanced by the critics may be of relevance, and suggest that the controversy over the relative importance of various factors would be a quiet debate over subtleties if the critics were less prone to caricaturing their opponents. This is not to say that dyed-inthe-wool do not exist. The debate has a political subtext, with the marxist-leaning Lewontin and Gould accusing sociobiologists of employing adaptationist fallacies in supporting socially regressive views of biological determinism. The history of this debate, and others related to it, are covered in detail by Cronin (1992) and Segerstråle (2000).

References

• Cronin, H. (1992). The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gould, S.J. & Lewontin, R.C. (1979). The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society London B. 205: 581—598.
• Lewontin, R.C. 1979. Sociobiology as an adaptationist program. Behavioral Science 24: 5—14.
• Lewontin, R.C. 1991. Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA. New York: Harper Collins
• Maynard Smith, J. (1988). Did Darwin get it right? Essays on games, sex and evolution London:Penguin books. ISBN 0140230130.
• Orzack, S.H. & Sober, E.R., eds. (2001). Adaptationism and Optimality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Segerstråle, U. 2000. Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sober, E. (1998) Six Sayings about Adaptationism in D. Hull and M. Ruse (eds) The Philosophy of Biology Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was a New York-born American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ... Richard Lewontin Richard Charles Dick Lewontin (born March 29, 1929) is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. ... John Maynard Smith Professor John Maynard Smith, F.R.S. (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British evolutionary biologist and geneticist. ...

See also

• spandrel

A spandrel is originally a term from Architecture, but has more recently been given an analogous meaning in Evolutionary biology. ...

External links

[1]