Punctuated Equilibrium and the Validation of Macroevolutionary Theory 981
field of neontological evolutionary studies. Stanley then followed with an
important book on macroevolution (1979).
From an isolated South Africa, Elisabeth Vrba published an astonishing paper
(1980) that gave an even more cogent and comprehensive voice to the
macroevolutionary implications of punctuated equilibrium. (Following British
custom from a former colony, she published as E. S. Vrba; Eldredge and I had
never heard of her work and didn't even know her gender. The paper burst upon us
as a most wonderful surprise.) In 1980, to fulfill an invitation from the editors to
celebrate the 5th anniversary of our new journal Paleobiology, I then published a
general article on the potential reform of evolutionary theory, a pretty modest
proposal I thought, but, oh my, did neo-Darwinian hackles rise (see pp. 1002-
1004).
At this point, the story becomes more like ordinary history in the crucial sense
that predictable components, driven by the internal logic of a system, interact with
peculiar contingencies to yield a result that no one could have anticipated.
Punctuated equilibrium did begin to receive general commentary in professional
journals (with Ridley's 1980 News and Views piece for Nature as a first example),
but I am sure that our theory would never have become such a public spectacle if
this interest had not coincided with two other events (or rather one event and a
surrounding political context).
In October 1980, Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History held a large
international conference on Macroevolution. This meeting, inspired in good part
(but by no means entirely, or even mainly) by the developing debate over
punctuated equilibrium, would have been a major event in our profession in any
case. But the Chicago meeting escalated to become something of a cultural cause
celebre because, and quite coincidentally, the symposium occurred at the height of
renewed political influence for the creationist movement in America.
This fundamentalist movement, dedicated (as a major political goal) to
suppressing the teaching of evolution in America's public schools, had flourished
in the early 1920's under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan, had culminated
in the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925, but had then petered out and
become relatively inactive, especially following the 1968 Supreme Court decision,
Epperson vs. Arkansas, that finally overturned the anti-evolution laws of the
Scopes era on First Amendment grounds.
But creationism surged again in the 1970's, largely in response to an in-
creasingly conservative political climate, and to the growing political savvy and
organizational skills of the evangelical right. Creationists enjoyed a second round
of success in the late 1970's, culminating in the passage of "equal time" laws for
creationism and evolution in the states of Arkansas and Louisiana. We would
eventually win this battle, first by overturning the Arkansas law in early 1982 (see
pp. 986-990 for the role of punctuated equilibrium in this trial), and then by
securing a resounding Supreme Court victory in 1987 in Edwards vs. Aguillard.
But, in 1980 as the Chicago meeting unfolded, creationists were enjoying the
height of their renewed political influence, and evolutionists were both justly
furious and rightly worried.