VMartin
Posts: 525
Joined: Nov. 2006
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Wesley R. Elsberry
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PE is by no means either synonymous with "saltationism", nor did Gould's essay on Richard Goldschmidt "link" PE with Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" conjecture. Gould wrote an article that has caused much confusion. "Return of the hopeful monsters" sought to point out that a hatchet job had been done on some of the concepts that Richard Goldschmidt had formulated. The discussion of systemic mutations as mutations which affect rate or timing of development has caused many people to assume that Gould was somehow linking PE to this concept. A close reading of the article shows this to not be the case.
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I didn't read the article. I hit on Gould's observation in Pandas Thumb (he mentioned Goldschmidt there too). Gould wrote there that new forms shows up in geological columns abruptly and it should be explained. Geological columns shows according Gould stasis and no way gradual development. Frankly speaking I was surprised by this observation when I read it first many years ago.It is the part of Pandas Thumb I thought about. Gould supported his explanation of this phenomenon somehow with soviet science. He probably thought that marxistic law of change of quantity into quality could be helpful. As far as I can judge it is not correct, because such a rule would prove more saltationism than gradual development. Btw. in that time many marxists adopted structuralism and they tried to explain biological evolution also via contradiction of parts and structures inside living organisms.
As far as I can judge the sudden change of morphology in geological columns is sometimes explained by alopatric speciation. On my opinion it is only hypothesis because nobody can prove it showing transitional fossils.
Gould prominent predecessors like paleontologists Dacque and Schindewolf also noticed the fact of stasis in fossil record and of abrupt change of it. They supported idea of saltationism with the same fossil record that led Gould and Eldredge to PE.
Schindewolf:
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"We might as well stop looking for the missing links as they never existed."
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As I noticed before once very popular German idealistic morphology is nowadays almost forgotten theory and Gould appreciated work of great paleotologist Schindewolf as "spectacularly flawed". Probably Gould was quite sure that his opinions are correct.
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I could not answer, but should maintain my ground.-
Charles Darwin
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