504 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
more unified science. It has embarked upon a period of synthesis, until
today it no longer presents the spectacle of a number of semi-independent
and largely contradictory sub-sciences, but is coming to rival the unity of
older sciences like physics, in which advance in any one branch leads
almost at once to advance in all other fields, and theory and experiment
march hand-in-hand. As one chief result, there has been a rebirth of
Darwinism (1942, p. 26).Thus we evolutionists have, ever since, called our central theory by a name
fashioned for a largely superseded set of concerns. In another sense, however,
Huxley chose his name to emphasize a particular scenario for evolutionary
science—and a characterization of this history as a "synthesis" seems both
reasonable and accurate. Huxley viewed the synthesis, in an interpretation that
became common in his time and has remained conventional ever since, as a two-
stage process of integration around a renewed Darwinian core. He emphasized this
Darwinian center at the close of the passage cited above, and then offered praise, in
purpler prose, to "this reborn Darwinism, this mutated phoenix risen from the ashes
of the pyre kindled by men so unlike as Bateson and Bergson"(1942,p.28).
The first phase, reasonably called a synthesis of Mendel and Darwin, required
the extinction of Mendelism's first major episode of evolutionary employment in
the non-Darwinian saltational theory of de Vries (see Chapter 5). Huxley cites
three major steps (1942, p. 25): the recognition that Mendelian principles operate
in all organisms, unicellular and multicellular, plant and animal; the key insight
that small scale, continuous Darwinian variability also maintains a Mendelian
basis; and the mathematical demonstration that small selection pressures acting on
minor genetic differences can render evolutionary change. This work culminated in
the origin of theoretical population genetics (see Provine, 1971), and led to our
almost catechistic invocation of a trinity—Fisher, Haldane, and Wright—as heroes
of this first phase. (I do not challenge the attribution, but have long been amused
by the almost formulaic citation; even the order of names has become invariant—
as in another more famous Trinity!)
The second phase, also a "synthesis" in the vernacular sense of the word,
began with Dobzhansky's masterful book (1937) and proceeded as a linking of
traditional sub disciplines in biology to the core theory forged during the first
phase. This activity, already in full swing when Huxley wrote his book, eventually
included such classics as Mayr (1942) for systematics, Simpson (1944) for
paleontology, White (1945) for cytology, Rensch (1947) for morphology, and
Stebbins (1950) for botany. Huxley made a good prediction, and hoped that his
own effort would fuel the grand integration: "The time is ripe for a rapid advance
in our understanding of evolution. Genetics, developmental physiology, ecology,
systematics, paleontology, cytology, mathematical analysis, and have all provided
new facts or new tools of research: the need today is for concerted attack and
synthesis. If this book contributes to such a synthetic point of view, I shall be well
content" (1942, p. 8).
I accept this traditional account of what the Synthesis synthesized, but