Adaptation and Natural Selection

Fossil Record and its Interpretations

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On page 99, Williams shows a figure for different interpretations of the same fossil record. A similar figure appears in G. G. Simpson (1967); Simpson's point is that a biologist's interpretation may be affected by the doctrine he/she subscribes, and Simpson's figure may be reproduced a follows (Simpson's Figure 25).

Given the same fossil record A (say, of ancient horses) , Simpson argues, the proponent of orthogenesis should interpret the record as in B, the proponent of salutatory evolution (or of punctuated equilibirum, like S. J. Gould) as in C, and the proponent of continuous evolution as in D. Which is right?

Students of the philosophy of science should be quite familiar with the problem of "curve-fitting", and Williams' and Simpton's problems are just another example of the same problem, specialized in the context of evolutionary biology.

References

Simpson, G. G. (1967) The Meaning of Evolution, revised ed., Yale University Press.

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