Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-g96k6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T18:49:09.701Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Possible mechanisms for a multiple-level model of evolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

H. C. Plotkin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University College London, London WC1E6BT, England
F. J. Odling
Affiliation:
Departments of Biology and Psychology, Brunel University, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, England

Extract

Many of the commentaries cohere around two major points of criticism. The first is that we have omitted discussion of the mechanisms that are assumed to operate at levels 2, 3, and 4. Campbell, Cloak, Dewsbury, Eckberg, Mundinger, Pulliam, Richerson & Boyd, Slobodkin, Simon, Williams, and Wahlsten all make comments that bear on this point. The second point is that we have omitted discussion of the fact that "organisms change the environment by their activities" (Lewontin) and thereby modify the selection pressures that act on them. Apart from Lewontin, this point has been raised in different forms by Barkow, Chase, Hull, Perzigian, Ruyle, and less directly by Slobodkin. Stemming from these two basic omissions there is a third general criticism. Numerous commentators have pointed out that we have failed to discuss sufficiently either the extent or nature of the constraints that may or may not be operating on supraordinate evolutionary processes as a function of their nested relationships to subordinate evolutionary processes within our scheme (Barkow, Campbell, Cloak, Chase, Lenington, Lewontin, Perzigian, Peterson, Pulliam, Richerson & Boyd, Simon, Slobodkin, and Williams). We start by acknowledging these three basic omissions. We agree that they exist and that they are serious.

Information

Type
Author's Response
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable