332 Margaret Morrison
was, among other things, complex mathematical frameworks capable of showing
that selection operated in Mendelian populations. Fisher introduced new math-
ematical methods (stochastic models) to model the change in population gene
frequencies as a random process evolving in time. He treated the survival of indi-
vidual genes by means of a branching process analysed by functional interation and
then set up a chain-binomial model and analysed it using a diffusion approxima-
tion involving partial differential equations [Edwards, 1994]. Branching processes
were used to calculate the survival probability of a new mutant. Sewall Wright
introduced the method of path analysis as a way of determining various causal
factors involved in the evolution of populations. While debates about the merits
of Fisher’s vs. Wright’s account of the evolutionary process continue today, dis-
agreements regarding those details in no way undermines the significance of their
achievement and the role that population genetics and its methods have come to
play in understanding fundamental aspects of the natural world.
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