Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 16:34:20 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: Query: What is "Adaptationism"?


> Date:          Fri, 24 May 1996 09:45:25 -0400
Jan C writes,

>      Either I missed some important posts on this thread re adaptationism, 
> or everyone in it is assuming everyone on the list is a biologist. Could 
> someone explain it clearly enough to a non-biologist so that she could 
> follow the debate more intelligently (in fact find out why or whether 
> there is a debate)?

In the spirit of presenting extreme positions as potentially 
representative, I reproduce R.C. Lewontin's definition of 
adaptationism:

"I call that approach to evolutionary studies which assumes without 
further proof that all aspects of the mophology, physiology, and 
behavior of organisms are adaptive optimal solutions the 
adaptationist program.  It is not a contingent theory of evolution or 
hypothesis to be tested since adaptation and optimality are a priori 
assumptions.  Rather, it is a program of explanation and 
exemplification in which the purpose of the investigator is to show 
_how_  organisms solve problems optimally, not _if_ they do."


> 
>      A derivative question. Would it be true to say that homo sapiens 
> has been more or less "stable" over the last 100,000 years? And if so, 
> then debates about evolution would re relevant to excplaining how homo 
> sapiens became homo sapiens, but not relevant or significant 
> (non-tautological) to anything that has happened to us during those 
> 100,000 years?

The theory of punctuated equilibrium implies just this conclusion 
about human evolution.  Stephen Jay Gould from Dinosaur in a 
Haystack:

"Large,  successful, well-adapted, mobile, geographically widespread 
species are particularly prone to stability ... Homo Sapiens 
possesses all these attributes for stability..."

Eldridge and Tattersall have a book on this subject entitled, The 
Myths of Human Evolution.

Terry McDonough


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