Abstract
In the introduction to the recently published collection Models in Paleobiology, Schopf (1972, p. 4) says, look with awe at the results which have followed the application of fundamental chemistry in a geochemical context, and the use of cartesian methodology in molecular biology. Our fossils are amenable to more than the traditional methods of analysis. We wanted to write a book which would take as its goal the self-conscious use of models in paleontological research. This kind of lament may have a familiar ring, particularly for those paleontologists who lived through the movement of the nineteen fifties in which the new systematics was applied to paleontology. There were then and there are now paleontologists who wish to escape pure description and establish paleontology once and for all on an equal footing with such disciplines as geochemistry and molecular biology. The accomplishment of this task depends upon an understanding of the relationship between paleontology and biological theory. It is this critical relationship that I shall examine in this paper.
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