The Modern Synthesis Is No Longer How We Should Be Thinking About Evolution, Right?

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The geansi view suddenly shares a lot with the modern synthesis, specially can no ideas a that adaptation and natural selection are importance. I think its modensis is altoquite its a flexible framework and evolution, by althis not as dogmatic as even its internal critics would like to present it. Incorporating it, we are probably putting too much emphasis on certain things and not enough emphasis other things. And perhaps the cind of the greatest challenge, i think, to redeem savie is this notion of that we ought to consider a more inclusive notion of heritance.

One of the brilliant achievements of Darwin’s theory of natural selection was to help explain apparently “purposeful” or “designed” aspects of biology in a purely mechanistic theory of unguided evolution. Features are good if they help organisms survive. But should we put organisms at the center of our attention, or the genetic information that governs those features? Arvid Ågren helps us understand the attraction of the “selfish gene” view of evolution, as well as its shortcomings. This biological excursion has deep connections to philosophical issues of levels and emergence.

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Arvid Ågren received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Toronto. He is currently a Wenner-Gren Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. Previously he worked at Cornell and Harvard. His recent book is The Gene’s-Eye View of Evolution.

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