Anthony Campbell  wrote:

> In article , John Wilkins wrote:
> > Anthony Campbell  wrote:
> > 
> >> In article ,
Representative Trantis
> >> wrote: >
> >> 
> >> [snip]
> >> 
> >> > 
> >> > Why did it take so long for sexual selection to catch on
and become
> >> > fully accepted, especially when you consider that it's all that
> >> > stands in the way of natural selction collapsing.
> >> > 
> >> 
> >> Two possible reasons come to mind:
> >> 
> >> 1. The theory assigns an important role to female choice, which was an
> >> unfashionable idea in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
> >> 
> >> 2. Victorian prudery.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> In any case, natural selection itself was not accorded much importance
> >> by many evolutionists in the latter part of the 19C. Even TH Huxley did
> >> not emphasize it. Only after the belated recognition of Mendelian
> >> genetics and the work of Ronald Fisher, Theodore Dobzhanski, Ernst Mayr
> >> and others in the 20C did it come back into prominence; this was the
> >> beginning of "neo-Darwinism".
> >> 
> > First, it's Dobzhansky, unless you use another orthography, in which
> > case it's Dobzhanskii, but at any rate, "Neo-Darwinism"
"began" around
> > 1893 when George Romanes called the writings of August Weismann and
> > Alfred Russel Wallace, who stressed the all-sufficiency of natural
> > selection as the answer to any puzzle or trait,
"neo-Darwinist" and
> > "ultra-Darwinist". He also said they out-Darwined
Darwin". Neither of
> > them had much use for sexual selection, although early on in his career
> > Wallace did allow that male choice (but not female choice :-) might play
> > a role in some cases.
> > 
> > The *second* neo-Darwinism began with Ronald Fisher's _The Genetical
> > Theory of Natural Selection_ in 1930 - Fisher discussed panmictic
> > selection only, and selection was the focus of his work (with an eye to
> > eugenics). Mayr and others followed him. Interestingly, Dobzhansky made
> > use of the work of Sewall Wright, who noted and named the effect we call
> > "genetic drift" as an alternative to selectionist explanations.
> > 
> 
> Thank you for pointing out the earlier use of
"neo-Darwinism". However,
> the term seems to be usually applied to the 20C revival of interest that
> began with Fisher. See, for example,  Michael Ruse (2003), Darwin and
> Design: "Prominent supporters of this new 'synthetic theory of
> evolution' (the English version was more commonly known as
> "neo-Darwinism") were ... Ernst Mayr ... George Gaylord
Simpson ... and
> G. Ledyard Stebbins." (p. 168).
> 
The phrase "commonly known as" should be a pointer, but let it be said
that most banners and rubrics in biology, and in particular in
evolutionary biology, use historical terms as if they were timeless
ideals. Ruse knows better (I know, because he makes the same point in
his original book on the Darwinian revolution), but a good many
biologists have a historical sense that extends, oh, all of three years
in some cases.

What we call "neo-Darwinism" today is more properly called the Oxford
School of evolutionary theory, although not all of its practitioners
were at Oxford anytime in their careers. It appears to have centered
around Haldane, Maynard Smith, and Julian Huxley. Mayr, Stebbins and
others certainly adopted quite a lot of their ideas and tendencies, but
many of the synthesists didn't. Do not be misled by Mayr's historical
revisionism.
-- 
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly, 
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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