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The Pattern of Evolution
Attempts to take the first steps towards a fuller understanding of the process of evolution. Complaining that simple reliance on the competition to reproduce fails to explain cross-genealogical patterns in the history of life, the author looks at the history of evolutionary thought and argues that geological and other events are intricately linked to how species developed over time. Finally, he contends that his insight shows how science itself needs to reintegrate for a full understanding of the universe around us. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
219 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1998
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About the author
Niles Eldredge
50 books26 followersNiles Eldredge (born August 25, 1943) is an American biologist and paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.
Eldredge began his undergraduate studies in Latin at Columbia University. Before completing his degree he switched to the study of anthropology under Norman D. Newell. It was at this time that his work at the American Museum of Natural History began, under the combined Columbia University-American Museum graduate studies program.
Eldredge graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1965, and enrolled in the university's doctoral program while continuing his research at the museum. He completed his PhD in 1969.
In 1969, Eldredge became a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently a curator in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of Paleontology, a position from which he recently retired. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. His specialty was the evolution of mid-Paleozoic Phacopida trilobites: a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 543 and 245 million years ago.
Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed punctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability.
Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species.
Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution.
Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior.
He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, including Reinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, and Dominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future of Homo sapiens.
Eldredge enjoys playing jazz trumpet and is an avid collector of 19th century cornets. He shares his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and more than 500 cornets. He also has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren.
Eldredge possesses a chart of the historical development of cornets (the musical instruments), which he uses as a comparison with that of the development of trilobites. The differences between them are meant to highlight the failures of intelligent design by comparing a system that is definitely designed, with a system that is not designed.
Eldredge began his undergraduate studies in Latin at Columbia University. Before completing his degree he switched to the study of anthropology under Norman D. Newell. It was at this time that his work at the American Museum of Natural History began, under the combined Columbia University-American Museum graduate studies program.
Eldredge graduated summa cum laude from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1965, and enrolled in the university's doctoral program while continuing his research at the museum. He completed his PhD in 1969.
In 1969, Eldredge became a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, and subsequently a curator in the Invertebrate Paleontology section of Paleontology, a position from which he recently retired. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. His specialty was the evolution of mid-Paleozoic Phacopida trilobites: a group of extinct arthropods that lived between 543 and 245 million years ago.
Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould proposed punctuated equilibria in 1972. Punctuated equilibrium is a refinement to evolutionary theory. It describes patterns of descent taking place in "fits and starts" separated by long periods of stability.
Eldredge went on to develop a hierarchical vision of evolutionary and ecological systems. Around this time, he became focused on the rapid destruction of many of the world's habitats and species.
Throughout his career, he has used repeated patterns in the history of life to refine ideas on how the evolutionary process actually works. Eldredge is proponent of the importance of environment in explaining the patterns in evolution.
Eldredge is a critic of the gene-centric view of evolution. His most recent venture is the development of an alternative account to the gene-based notions of evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior.
He has published more than 160 scientific articles, books, and reviews, including Reinventing Darwin, an examination of current controversies in evolutionary biology, and Dominion, a consideration of the ecological and evolutionary past, present, and future of Homo sapiens.
Eldredge enjoys playing jazz trumpet and is an avid collector of 19th century cornets. He shares his home in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife and more than 500 cornets. He also has two sons, two daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren.
Eldredge possesses a chart of the historical development of cornets (the musical instruments), which he uses as a comparison with that of the development of trilobites. The differences between them are meant to highlight the failures of intelligent design by comparing a system that is definitely designed, with a system that is not designed.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 20, 2010
Niles Eldredge had an interesting concept in writing The Pattern of Evolution, at least one that shied away from the norm of popular writing on evolution. No "history of life" narrative will be found here, at least not in the normal sense. The overarching theme is one against genetic reductionism, and an emphasis on both historical pattern as well as unique historical events in affecting the course of evolution. Though the subject material in itself was interesting, overall I found the book as a whole to be somewhat forgettable. There was not much here that was new for me, apart from some interesting tidbits, for example how shifting plate tectonics can lead to widespread environmental changes, which in turn affects evolutionary patterns via shifting climate or environmental factors. This obviously plays a part in facilitating higher-level evolutionary events, such as migration, extinction, and subsequent speciation and radiation of lineages.
However, the overall message, and a point particularly harped upon by Eldredge was that of punctuated equilibrium. Of course this is to be expected, given his role in formulating the theory, but I do wish that the duo of Eldredge/Gould would take a different tack in more of their books. Further, I found his final synthesis of the subjects of the preceding chapters to be rather uninspired and unconvincing. While the emphasis on the need for an understanding or theory of ecology to be incorporated the framework of the modern synthesis I can certainly agree with, the ultimate causation of major environmental events (outside of for example, extra-terrestrial objects) attributed to plate tectonics did not work well. To clarify, plate tectonics obviously cause major geological and environmental events, Eldredge gave tectonics the ability to cause regular evolutionary patterns found in the fossil record. While this may work on a very large level (that of major extinctions caused by climate change), he provided no evidence that I can remember of plate tectonics being able to cause shorter length evolutionary patterns with regularity. An example of this would be the pulsation of radiation, stability, and extinction found in the devonian delta fauna talked about in the last chapter, over the course of a few million years per fauna. Given the emphasis on patterns in the fossil record, the neglect to show exactly how plate tectonics could provide these regular pulses seems odd.
To conclude, the information given was good, the concepts were refreshing, but ultimately Eldredge did not elucidate or elaborate the point to which he was building toward throughout the book when he finally got to it. Exposition at the expense of detailed insight.
However, the overall message, and a point particularly harped upon by Eldredge was that of punctuated equilibrium. Of course this is to be expected, given his role in formulating the theory, but I do wish that the duo of Eldredge/Gould would take a different tack in more of their books. Further, I found his final synthesis of the subjects of the preceding chapters to be rather uninspired and unconvincing. While the emphasis on the need for an understanding or theory of ecology to be incorporated the framework of the modern synthesis I can certainly agree with, the ultimate causation of major environmental events (outside of for example, extra-terrestrial objects) attributed to plate tectonics did not work well. To clarify, plate tectonics obviously cause major geological and environmental events, Eldredge gave tectonics the ability to cause regular evolutionary patterns found in the fossil record. While this may work on a very large level (that of major extinctions caused by climate change), he provided no evidence that I can remember of plate tectonics being able to cause shorter length evolutionary patterns with regularity. An example of this would be the pulsation of radiation, stability, and extinction found in the devonian delta fauna talked about in the last chapter, over the course of a few million years per fauna. Given the emphasis on patterns in the fossil record, the neglect to show exactly how plate tectonics could provide these regular pulses seems odd.
To conclude, the information given was good, the concepts were refreshing, but ultimately Eldredge did not elucidate or elaborate the point to which he was building toward throughout the book when he finally got to it. Exposition at the expense of detailed insight.
January 19, 2025
THE CO-CREATOR OF ‘PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM’ LOOKS BROADLY AT EVOLUTION
Paleontologist Niles Eldredge wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “It has been a persistent theme in my thinking for the past 15 years that organisms do two, and only two, basic things: They obtain the energy they need to develop… grow, and simply stay alive; and they, typically if not universally, reproduce. So the difference between a guy like [Richard] Dawkins and a guy like me is really rather simple: Dawkins says in effect that, from an evolutionary perspective, you may eat to live but you live to reproduce…. I take a more balanced view: You eat to live. You may, as well, reproduce, though your own survival does not depend on it. I also say that how successful you are at getting the necessary energy to live will, on average, affect how successful you are at reproducing. This is a simple way of stating Darwin’s classic formulation of natural selection.” (Pg. 2) He adds, “This is a book that asks the question: How has the evolutionary theory... involving ideas on how biological [change] happens, remained so disconnected, so aloof, from the domain of the rest of science---the world of matter-in-motion studied by physicists, chemists, and earth scientists.” (Pg. 3-4)
He explains, “I was never in danger of going the saltationist route, though Steve Gould, my friend and co-developer of the notion of punctuated equilibrium, and I have been accused of precisely that on many occasions. I am… basically rather conservative and driven… by a desire to be taken seriously. That has always meant staying within the fold of orthodoxy---all the while, of course, still looking for a better fit between the material world and our descriptions of it. And, in any case, there was a …third, far better looking model that seemed to fit the data like a glove---a model that had the virtue of coming from Darwinian orthodoxy. That model is ‘allopatric speciation,’ the splitting up of an ancestral species into two or more descendant species, initially through geographic isolation.” (Pg. 20)
He notes, “Stressing connectedness and continuity … led Darwin to deny another important empirical pattern in the fossil record: STASIS… For the most part, Darwin simply denied the reality of stasis. Instead, he chose once again to blame the nonprevalence of ‘incessantly graded series’ in the fossil record on a poor record: poor preservation, lack of time documented in sediments, and lack of paleontological collecting and analytic experience. But none of these reasons could explain away the problem for later generations… stasis plus discontinuities between fossil species became the pattern to be explained for Eldredge and Gould. Darwin’s main concern was to convince the world that life had evolved… To him discontinuity and statis were two patterns that were inconveniently, if not wholly antithetical to establishing his views.” (Pg, 88-89)
He recounts that “[George Gaylord] Simpson taught us to take what we THINK we know about the mechanics of generation-by-generation changes (and stability) in gene frequencies and to compare that with the evolutionary pattern we ACTUALLY SEE in the fossil record. He taught us to be bold in forging new combinations of familiar processes to forge a better fit between what we think is going on and what we see in the record of the rocks. That’s how punctuated equilibrium came into being.” (Pg. 140)
He reports, “I tend to represent myself as a ‘knee-jerk neo-Darwinian,’ someone who embraces adaptation through natural selection as a thoroughly established cornerstone of evolutionary biology. In applying geographic variation and speciation as interpretive principles to my paleontological patterns, I was being utterly conventional. (The only criticism that the speciational aspect of punctuated equilibria has ever received is that it is not particularly ‘original.’) Yet what is important is that the patterns themselves FORCED the interpretational switch from Darwinian and Fisherian) emphasis on simple adaptive transformation within lineages to one emphasizing the origin of discontinuities among far-flung populations of ancestral species. There is no point to inventing theory where an existing alternative will do quite nicely.” (Pg. 141-142)
He explains, “What [Yale paleontologist Elizabeth S.] Vrba is saying… is that habitat change---‘degradation,’ from the standpoint of what came before—can lead to extinction, but it can ALSO lead to speciation. Habitat fragmentation, particularly relatively abrupt, physically induced fragmentation, is just what is needed to cause reproductive fragmentation---in other words, speciation. In other words, evolution.” (Pg. 161)
He concludes, “the physical world is more than simple backdrop to the evolution of life. The physical world changes in a regular, intelligible manner. And those changes have had profound effects on the evolution of life. These evolutionary effects are regular and lawlike. And they invite---actually demand---rational contemplation and explicit incorporation into evolutionary theory. Adding the hierarchy of ecology to an expanded version of [Theodosius] Dobzhansky’s hierarchy of genealogy helps to expand evolutionary theory pointing it away from a purely lineage-based discourse towards the rest of the physical world. But now that plate tectonics has melded the study of the patterns of geological history with an understanding of the dynamic processes that produce these patterns, and now that progress has also been made in integrating… patterns of biological history with theoretical understanding of the evolutionary process, the time has come to acknowledge and embrace the physical context of biological systems---and the evolutionary history of life.” (Pg. 179)
This book will interest those studying contemporary evolutionary theory.
Paleontologist Niles Eldredge wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “It has been a persistent theme in my thinking for the past 15 years that organisms do two, and only two, basic things: They obtain the energy they need to develop… grow, and simply stay alive; and they, typically if not universally, reproduce. So the difference between a guy like [Richard] Dawkins and a guy like me is really rather simple: Dawkins says in effect that, from an evolutionary perspective, you may eat to live but you live to reproduce…. I take a more balanced view: You eat to live. You may, as well, reproduce, though your own survival does not depend on it. I also say that how successful you are at getting the necessary energy to live will, on average, affect how successful you are at reproducing. This is a simple way of stating Darwin’s classic formulation of natural selection.” (Pg. 2) He adds, “This is a book that asks the question: How has the evolutionary theory... involving ideas on how biological [change] happens, remained so disconnected, so aloof, from the domain of the rest of science---the world of matter-in-motion studied by physicists, chemists, and earth scientists.” (Pg. 3-4)
He explains, “I was never in danger of going the saltationist route, though Steve Gould, my friend and co-developer of the notion of punctuated equilibrium, and I have been accused of precisely that on many occasions. I am… basically rather conservative and driven… by a desire to be taken seriously. That has always meant staying within the fold of orthodoxy---all the while, of course, still looking for a better fit between the material world and our descriptions of it. And, in any case, there was a …third, far better looking model that seemed to fit the data like a glove---a model that had the virtue of coming from Darwinian orthodoxy. That model is ‘allopatric speciation,’ the splitting up of an ancestral species into two or more descendant species, initially through geographic isolation.” (Pg. 20)
He notes, “Stressing connectedness and continuity … led Darwin to deny another important empirical pattern in the fossil record: STASIS… For the most part, Darwin simply denied the reality of stasis. Instead, he chose once again to blame the nonprevalence of ‘incessantly graded series’ in the fossil record on a poor record: poor preservation, lack of time documented in sediments, and lack of paleontological collecting and analytic experience. But none of these reasons could explain away the problem for later generations… stasis plus discontinuities between fossil species became the pattern to be explained for Eldredge and Gould. Darwin’s main concern was to convince the world that life had evolved… To him discontinuity and statis were two patterns that were inconveniently, if not wholly antithetical to establishing his views.” (Pg, 88-89)
He recounts that “[George Gaylord] Simpson taught us to take what we THINK we know about the mechanics of generation-by-generation changes (and stability) in gene frequencies and to compare that with the evolutionary pattern we ACTUALLY SEE in the fossil record. He taught us to be bold in forging new combinations of familiar processes to forge a better fit between what we think is going on and what we see in the record of the rocks. That’s how punctuated equilibrium came into being.” (Pg. 140)
He reports, “I tend to represent myself as a ‘knee-jerk neo-Darwinian,’ someone who embraces adaptation through natural selection as a thoroughly established cornerstone of evolutionary biology. In applying geographic variation and speciation as interpretive principles to my paleontological patterns, I was being utterly conventional. (The only criticism that the speciational aspect of punctuated equilibria has ever received is that it is not particularly ‘original.’) Yet what is important is that the patterns themselves FORCED the interpretational switch from Darwinian and Fisherian) emphasis on simple adaptive transformation within lineages to one emphasizing the origin of discontinuities among far-flung populations of ancestral species. There is no point to inventing theory where an existing alternative will do quite nicely.” (Pg. 141-142)
He explains, “What [Yale paleontologist Elizabeth S.] Vrba is saying… is that habitat change---‘degradation,’ from the standpoint of what came before—can lead to extinction, but it can ALSO lead to speciation. Habitat fragmentation, particularly relatively abrupt, physically induced fragmentation, is just what is needed to cause reproductive fragmentation---in other words, speciation. In other words, evolution.” (Pg. 161)
He concludes, “the physical world is more than simple backdrop to the evolution of life. The physical world changes in a regular, intelligible manner. And those changes have had profound effects on the evolution of life. These evolutionary effects are regular and lawlike. And they invite---actually demand---rational contemplation and explicit incorporation into evolutionary theory. Adding the hierarchy of ecology to an expanded version of [Theodosius] Dobzhansky’s hierarchy of genealogy helps to expand evolutionary theory pointing it away from a purely lineage-based discourse towards the rest of the physical world. But now that plate tectonics has melded the study of the patterns of geological history with an understanding of the dynamic processes that produce these patterns, and now that progress has also been made in integrating… patterns of biological history with theoretical understanding of the evolutionary process, the time has come to acknowledge and embrace the physical context of biological systems---and the evolutionary history of life.” (Pg. 179)
This book will interest those studying contemporary evolutionary theory.
July 19, 2010
The most interesting section was on the transition from belief that the continents were immobile to plate tectonics theory in the 1960s. There are 6 or so major sets of evidence from different areas that came together and resulted in the change, and only a few I'd seen before in isolation- and most modern geology books take it for granted. Continental drift was proposed decades earlier but with less evidence and some bad evidence thrown in, this is compared to the publication of 'The Origin of Species' which was immediately convincing.
August 24, 2009
1999 essays on modern evolutionary theory.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews