72 Sahotra Sarkar
information on the conditions found in nature, but only show in what circum-
stances different factors can be of importance in evolution” (p. 201). The role of
field work was to discover those conditions.
One year later, at a Cold Spring Harbor symposium on quantitative biology,
Dobzhansky stated it equally forcefully. For him, population genetics was central
to the study of evolution [1955, 12]. Moreover:
The foundations of population genetics were laid chiefly by mathemat-
ical deduction from basic premises contained in the works of Mendel
and Morgan and their followers. Haldane, Wright, and Fisher are the
pioneers of population genetics whose only research equipment was pa-
per and ink rather than microscopes, experimental fields,Drosophila
bottles, or mouse cages. Theirs is theoretical biology at its best, and it
has provided a guiding light for rigorous quantitative experimentation
and observation. [1955, 13–14]And, in 1966, George C. Williams repeated the consensus: “The study of adap-
tation [which he took to be the core of evolutionary theory] has already had its
Newtonian synthesis [which] is the genetical theory of natural selection, a log-
ical unification of Mendelism and Darwinism that was accomplished by Fisher,
Haldane and Wright more than thirty years ago” [1966, 20].
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Provine started from the same position:
The origins of population genetics is perhaps best understood as a
product of the conflict between two views of evolution which were
eventually synthesized. On the one side was Darwin’s belief in gradual
evolution produced by natural selection acting upon small continuous
variations. On the other was Galton’s belief in discontinuous evolution.... The theoretical foundations [of the synthetic theory], sometimes
termed ‘classical’ population genetics, were laid between 1918 and 1932
by R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright. [1971, ix–x]
However, Provine’s genetical account underwent a significant change in the late
1970’s, as he embarked on a biography of Wright with Wright’s active collabora-
tion.^32 Provine encountered the unresolved dispute between Fisher and Wright
about what mechanism hadhistoricallybeen the most significant agent of evo-
lutionary change on Earth. As Provine [1986] records, the dispute had become
vitriolic, partly because the antagonism between Wright and Fisher became per-
sonal in the 1930s. There was little prospect of resolving the dispute using the
experimental data or analytic techniques of the late 1970’s. Provine chose to em-
phasize the significance of the dispute and, again not surprisingly, emerged as a
partisan for Wright, ending his biography with a bold claim: “I predict that histo-
rians and biologists of the twenty-first century will look upon Wright as the single
most influential evolutionary theorist of this century” (p. 499).
(^32) See Provine [1986, xiii].