Interpreting the History of Evolutionary Biology through a Kuhnian Prism: Sense or Nonsense?

Abstract

Traditionally, Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) is largely identified with his analysis of the structure of scientific revolutions. Here, we contribute to a minority tradition in the Kuhn literature by interpreting the history of evolutionary biology through the prism of the entire historical developmental model of sciences that he elaborates in The Structure. This research not only reveals a certain match between this model and the history of evolutionary biology but, more importantly, also sheds new light on several episodes in that history, and particularly on the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), the construction of the modern evolutionary synthesis, the chronic discontent with it, and the latest expression of that discontent, called the extended evolutionary synthesis. Lastly, we also explain why this kind of analysis hasn’t been done before.

Incommensurability and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: taking Kuhn seriously

“…However, in the philosophy of biology there has been a reluctance to apply this and other Kuhnian concepts to disputes in evolutionary biology on the basis that Kuhn's account of scientific change does not work for fields and theories outside those from which it was originally developed, namely, the physical and astronomical sciences (Mayr, 1994(Mayr, , 2004 notable exceptions to this have been Greene, 1981;O'Malley & Boucher, 2005;Pigliucci, 2012). However, of late, some authors have vindicated the usefulness of Kuhn's ideas to shed light on some episodes of the history of evolutionary biology (Tanghe et al, 2018(Tanghe et al, , 2021. This requires taking Kuhn seriously and not hastily rejecting what might be seen as a strawman depiction of his ideas.…”

The extended evolutionary synthesis: An integrated historical and philosophical examination

“…Such a preparadigmatic period lasted until the 1940s when the Modern Synthesis took place (cf. Tanghe et al, 2021). The term Modern Synthesis was coined by Julian Huxley as the subtitle for his book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, published in 1942.…”

Failures to disagree are essential for environmental science to effectively influence policy development

“…This means that the finding of a counter-example against a theory is expected in the ecological disciplines and thus model drift and crisis, the phases preceding a model revolution, is an almost permanently present aspect. This makes ecology have more of an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary dynamic (Graham & Dayton, 2002;Naeem, 2002;Paine, 2002;Tanghe et al, 2021) yet prone to lock-in (Figure 2). our perspective links to recent trends in open science and reproducibility, suggesting structural changes in values and incentives that must better align with what is good for science and policy, than with what is good for personal career development.…”