History of Evolutionary Thought Since 1930

Abstract

Evolutionary biology underwent several significant transformations in the period after 1930. While mid-century was dominated by the evolutionary synthesis and the professionalization of evolutionary biology, the second half of the 20th century saw evolutionary research diversifying and the domain of evolutionary phenomena expanded, especially in response to the rise of molecular biology. While what happened in 1950 may seem ancient to a contemporary evolutionary biologist, to a historian of biology the last half of the 20th century is recent history. Where the literature on Darwin could fill a bibliography by itself, the history of modern evolutionary biology is neither as extensive nor as comprehensive. Some topics such as the evolutionary synthesis and molecular evolution have a rich historical literature. Others such as cultural evolution or quantitative genetics still await further historical analysis: not because they are undeserving, but because they are just now becoming ripe for historical investigation. For the purposes of this article, we selected significant pieces of historical and some philosophical scholarship that address major developments in the history of evolutionary biology. We did not select so-called classic papers by evolutionary biologists or review papers written by biologists. Instead our focus was on evolutionary biology as it has been contextualized and discussed by historians who have often been seeking to address a range of non-biological issues regarding the nature and practice of science, and how different aspects of evolutionary biology reflect the time and place of their development.