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Biological theory: Postmodern evolution?

Nature volume 455, pages 281–284 (2008)Cite this article

This summer a group of high-profile researchers met in Altenberg, Austria, to try and plot the future course of evolutionary theory. John Whitfield was there.

"Oh my gosh," says Massimo Pigliucci, "maybe I shouldn't use that term." Pigliucci, responding to comments on his talk about how living things respond to their environment, and what it means for evolution, has just let slip the p-word. Later the same day, Günter Wagner, an evolutionary theorist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, puts up a slide bearing the words 'Postmodern Synthesis'. Pigliucci is moved to make an editorial suggestion from the floor: "I'd really rather we didn't use that term." Wagner says the slide was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, but Pigliucci is worried about the impression the word creates: "If there's one thing we don't want, it's for people to get the idea that there's a bunch of evolutionary theories out there, and that they're all equal."

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Authors
  1. John Whitfield
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Additional information

John Whitfield is the author of In the Beat of a Heart: Life, Energy, and the Unity of Nature. There is a Correction associated with this article: we should have identified Susan Mazur as the first to use the term 'The Woodstock of Evolution' to describe the Altenberg meeting.

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Heredity journal

Konrad Lorenz Institute workshop homepage

Altenberg 2008: What happened?

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Massimo Pigliucci's blog

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Whitfield, J. Biological theory: Postmodern evolution?. Nature 455, 281–284 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/455281a

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