Page 78 - The Evolution Impasse 2
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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
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