E.Mayrin muisteloita.

Julkaisu ei ole enää aivan uusi,mutta melko tuore edelleen.Mayr täytti vasta vuosisatoja ja siinä sivussa oli aikaa pohtia evoluutiobiologian evoluutiota varrella vuosien.

Muutamia sitaatteja;
"Evolutionary biology in its first 90 years (1859 to the 1940s) consisted of two widely divergent fields: evolutionary change in populations and biodiversity, the domains of geneticists and naturalists (systematicists), respectively."

"Curiously, I cannot pinpoint the age at which I became an evolutionist. I received all of my education in Germany, where evolution was not really controversial. In the gymnasium (equivalent to a U.S. high school), my biology teacher took evolution for granted. So, I am quite certain, did my parents--who, to interest their three teenage sons, subscribed to a popular natural history journal that accepted evolution as a fact. Indeed, in Germany at that time there was no Protestant fundamentalism. And after I had entered university, no one raised any questions about evolution, either in my medical curriculum or in my preparations for the Ph.D. Those who were unable to adopt creation as a plausible solution for biological diversity concluded that evolution was the only rational explanation for the living world."

"At a meeting in Princeton in 1947, the new paradigm was fully acknowledged and it was confirmed again and again in the next 60 years. Whenever an author claimed to have found an error in the Synthesis, his claim was rapidly refuted."

Mayr oli ja on yksi nk.modernin synteesin luojista.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/305/5680/46