THE MODERN SYNTHESIS AND ITS POSTMODERN DISCONTENTS

Abstract

Review of: Pigliucci, M., and G. B. Mu ̈ller, editors. 2010. Evo- lution: The Extended Synthesis. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mas- sachusetts. vii + 495 pages. Everyone who reads this journal should read this book. For maximum effect, read it with colleagues and students and have a spirited discussion of each of its essays. If you do, you will draw a better appreciation of the relationships among different areas of evolutionary biology, focus your attention on what advances in biological knowledge can mean for the study of evolution, and wrestle with the problem of how much revision and change a dominant paradigm can sustain before we have to declare it history.