Neither Boredom nor Heresy

Scientific theories, or interconnected groups of them, are often likened to buildings – as in the phrase ‘theoretical edifice’. There is a lot of sense in this analogy. General theories are often built up painstakingly from many different components. They are underpinned by various ‘foundations’. Different parts of a theoretical edifice are often interdependent – if one part turns out to be wrong, the whole structure may eventually collapse.

We can picture neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, or the ‘modern synthesis’, as one particular theoretical edifice. In this context, criticisms of the theory tend to be reacted to in a bimodal way. When a mild-mannered critic points out that the theory is fine as far as it goes, but that it lacks a developmental component (e.g. Horder 1994), a reaction verging on boredom is sometimes engendered: something along the lines of ‘yes, a few bricks are missing, but they will eventually be discovered and inserted’. In contrast, more damning criticism, which implies that the whole edifice needs to be demolished and replaced with a different one with greater explanatory power (e.g. Rosen 1984), is rightly regarded as ‘heresy’.

It should by now be apparent that the view of existing evolutionary theory taken herein constitutes a criticism of intermediate scale. There is not just a brick or two missing, but rather a whole section of the building.