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On the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

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Essays on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Evolutionary Biology ((BRIEFSEVOLUTION))

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Abstract

This chapter outlines a ‘mathematically elegant’ expansion of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis that embeds modalities of direct heritage—from genes to institutional memory—within a more comprehensive milieu including environment, development, niche structure, and large deviations, all under the influence of a stochastic burdens and selection pressures that sculpt evolutionary response. The approach, based on the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory, modulo abduction of appropriate tools from statistical mechanics and nonequilibrium thermodynamics, can serve as a foundation in developing new statistical tools for the analysis of experimental and observational data related to evolutionary process across multiple scales and levels of organization.

The process of evolution is a complex set of phenomena posing a diverse array of questions that requires dissection from many angles simultaneously…[T]here is no ‘fundamental’ viewpoint or level to which we can reduce our picture…[A] fully unified view of evolutionary processes may be out of reach… — Love ( 2010 )

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  1. Division of Epidemiology, The New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA

    Rodrick Wallace

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Wallace, R. (2023). On the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. In: Essays on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. SpringerBriefs in Evolutionary Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29879-0_2

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