Page 78 - The Evolution Impasse 2

76 Neo-Darwinism Comedy, The

As a re sult, all pic tures of cause liv ing things to de vel op?"—
Hesperopithecus har old cook ii were which Darwin had been un a ble to
swift ly re moved from the lit er a ture. an swer, but had sought to re solve
based on Lamarck—these peo ple re -
plied, "Random mu ta tions." They
NEO-DARWINISM COMEDY, ad vanced a new the o ry by add ing
THE the con cept of mu ta tion to Darwin's
With the ge net ic laws dis cov ered the sis of nat u ral se lec tion; which
in the first quar ter of the 20th cen tu - new the o ry be gan to be known as
ry, Darwin's the o ry reached a com - neo-Darwinism (or the Modern
plete im passe. At this, a group of sci - Synthetic Theory of Evolution,
en tists de ter mined to re main loy al to which see).
ev o lu tion the o ry came to geth er at a The dec ades that fol lowed saw
meet ing held by the American hope less at tempts to prove neo-
Geology Association in 1941. After Darwinism. Mutations were well
lengthy dis cus sions by ge net i cists known to be breaks, shifts and de -
such as G. Ledyard Stebbins and fects oc cur ring in liv ing or gan isms'
Theodosius Dobzhansky, zo ol o gists genes as the re sult of ex ter nal fac -
such as Ernst Mayr and Julian tors, which give rise to se ri ous dam -
Huxley, and pa le on tol o gists such as age on prac ti cal ly ev ery oc ca sion.
George Gaylord Gibson and Glen L. Nevertheless, neo-Darwinists car -
Jepsen, the de ci sion was reached to ried out thou sands of ex per i ments to
patch up Darwinism. try to es tab lish an ex am ple of a use -
To the ques tion of "What is the ful mu ta tion—en deav ors that in va ri -
source of ben e fi cial chan ges that a bly end ed in fi as cos. (See Mutation:

The Evolution Impasse II