And from what I've read, there was a lot of confusion as to whether the "hopeful monster" notion did or did not fit well into the Darwinian paradigm. Certainly Darwin was more of an extreme gradualist than most biologists are today, but on the other hand, a modern evo-devo type would probably include anything you can explain with the established genetic and developmental mechanisms as fitting into the neo-Darwinian picture. (Though Lynn Margulis, if I recall correctly, regards all the crazy stuff that bacteria do as too different to be honestly called Darwinian. It turns into arguments over words.)
It all just increases my astonishment that Darwin and Wallace were able to take it as far as they did with no clue about modern genetics.
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Date: 2006-04-05 08:42 am (UTC)It all just increases my astonishment that Darwin and Wallace were able to take it as far as they did with no clue about modern genetics.