Quotes about the Modern Synthesis and its Limitations by Evolutionary Scientists

Quotes about the Modern Synthesis and its Limitations by Evolutionary Scientists:

EV Koonin "The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking: in the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution. So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone" 

Richard Lewontin: "The Modern Synthesis, however much of a triumph it was, was also inherently limited, because it took as its fundamental unit of selection the individual organism, and thus could not readily cope with phenomena that require thinking about groups higher than the organism." 

Lynn Margulis: "Darwinism can only explain microevolution; the origin of new, higher levels of biological organization ... cannot be explained by gradualist Darwinism." 

Susan Oyama: "The Modern Synthesis ... implicitly accepted a gene-centered view of evolution, where genes hold the keys to all phenotypic change." 

Kim Sterelny: "The Modern Synthesis…is not everything. We need to build new tools for thinking about evolution, particularly tools that allow us to think about higher-level units like development, symbiosis, and cooperation." 

Evelyn Fox Keller: "The Modern Synthesis ... needs to be broadened to take account of the embodied, developmental nature of organisms and the complex interactions between organisms and their environments." 

Russell Lande: "Evolutionary explanations need to move beyond just population genetics and selection, and consider developmental constraints, history, and chance events." 

David Sloan Wilson: "The gene-centered perspective of the Modern Synthesis has led to misunderstandings about the relative importance of individual, group, and ecosystem selection in evolution." 

Robert N. Brandon: "The Modern Synthesis (...) can be interpreted in multiple ways, leading to different views on the nature of selection, units of selection, and the role of genes." 

Peter Godfrey-Smith: "The Modern Synthesis is like a good map, it helps us navigate, but it's not the whole territory. There's still a lot about evolution we don't understand." 

Marc Kirschner and Scott E. Baird: "The Modern Synthesis is a living framework, open to revision and new discoveries. We should celebrate its successes while acknowledging its limitations and actively exploring new evolutionary ideas." 

Nils Matzke: "The Modern Synthesis is a crucial foundation for understanding evolution, but it's not an end point. Evolution is a complex, dynamic process, and ongoing research is continually revealing new facets of its wonders." 

Olen R Brown: “We conclude that macroevolution via survival of the fittest is not salvageable by arguments for random genetic drift and other proposed mechanisms.  We challenge evolutionary biology to advance boldly beyond the inadequacies of the modern synthesis to evolve, biological evolution must face the known deficiencies, especially the limitations of the concept survival of the fittest.”