the worthy apex of an extensive pyramid. Scientists fight and squabble as all folks
do (and I have scarcely avoided a substantial documentation thereof in this book).
But we are, in general, a reasonably honorable lot, and we do embrace a tendency
to help each other because we really do revel in the understanding of nature's facts
and ways—and most of us will even trade some personal acclaim for the goal of
faster and firmer learning. For all the tensions and unhappinesses in any life, I can
at least say, with all my heart, that I chose to work in the best of all enterprises at
the best of all possible times. May our contingent future only improve this matrix
for my successors.
Epitomes for a Long Development
Levels of Potential Originality
Most of this book can be described as extensive narration of work already done,
and ideas already expounded elsewhere. But no one should write at such length
merely to organize the conventional material of a field, and without an original
structure, or a set of unconventional ideas, to propose. I wrote The Structure of
Evolutionary Theory because I felt that I had followed a sufficiently idiosyncratic
procedure to devise a sufficiently novel theoretical structure that then yielded a
sufficient number of original insights on specific matters to qualify as a
justification for spending so many years of a career, and daring to ask readers for
such a non-trivial chunk of their attention.
As implied by the foregoing sentence, I think that whatever originality this
work possesses might best be conceptualized at three levels of basic structure,
primary justifications for the major components of theory, and specific insights or
discoveries then developed under the aegis of this structure and theory. At the first
level of basic structure, I believe that three features of organization set the novelty
of presentation:
- Developing an exegesis of essential components in the logic of Darwinian
theory, as expressed in the agency, efficacy, and scope of selection as an
evolutionary mechanism (Chapter 2). - Explicating the history of evolutionary thought as a complex and extended
debate about these essential components, developed negatively at first by early
evolutionists who sought alternative formulations to Darwinism (Chapters 3-6),
and then positively in our times by scientists who recognized the need for
extensive revisions and expansions that would build an enlarged structure upon a
Darwinian foundation, rather than uproot the theoretical core of selectionism
(Chapters 7-12). - Formulating an expanded theory that introduces substantial revisions on
each branch of Darwinian central logic, but builds, in its ensemble, a coherently
enlarged structure with a retained Darwinian base—moving from Darwin's single
level of agency to a hierarchical theory of selection on the first branch; balancing
positive sources of internal constraint (for both structural and historical reasons)
with the conventional externalism of natural selection on the second branch; and
recognizing the disparate inputs of various tiers
Defining and Revising the Structure of Evolutionary Theory 49