3 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
This is an ongoing debate. There’s strong evidence on both sides and it feels like consensus occasionally does change at conferences. In the public sphere “punctuated equilibrium” was really well argued by Stephen Gould. I lean toward Darwinian gradualism but there are good reasons to be ambivalent. The paper itself is trying to make a case at synthesizing the ideas with a new model.
The challenge to Darwinian evolution is the challenge to Darwin’s idea that evolution has been pretty consistent over time (not discounting the effects of new body plans or innovations that allowed for rapid diversification at various times in evolutionary history). The other side here believes that evolution is mostly static for large periods of evolutionary time until a radically different offspring appears (or an event like a chromosome duplication) that does so well it is able to diversify very quickly and establish entire new branches in the tree of life that again go static before rapid bursts catalyze another diversifying event in a lineage.
It’s not a challenge to “Darwinian evolution” in any non-academic way. Everyone meaningful on both sides of this debate believes that all life originated from 1 common ancestor around 4 billion years ago. Academic disagreements like that are often misunderstood and disseminated as challenges to the broader theory in a way that benefits the intelligent design lobby.
Comment by Toolatetootired at 03/03/2022 at 02:02 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank you. This clarified the point of the article in a way i could understand.