When in the course of scientific progress it becomes necessary for new students to dissolve the philosophical ties that have bound them to the worldview of their teachers and to assume an expanded worldview, a decent respect to the opinions of those who laid the groundwork for their advances requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to the separation.
I hold these postulates to be self-evident aspects of Darwinism: that complex traits are not created for Final Purpose but evolve through historical avenues of cause and effect, that to explain such traits requires assumptions of selection for immediate benefit and gradual evolution, and that if there is a unit of evolution that optimizes, it is the gene upon its immediate environmental and genetic background. It follows that the more complex an organismal trait is, the more likely it evolved through a stepwise process. — That to secure these postulates, Evolutionists must be vigilant against the ever-present threat of teleological thinking or the tendency to appeal to Final Causes, and to replace such thinking with that based in Causal Determinism — That whenever any paradigm becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the New Student to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a New Paradigm, based on foundation that yield a bridge to a higher level of inquiry.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Paradigms long established should not be changed for light and transient causes. But when a long train of anomalies and paradoxes shifts the attention of theorists from the explanation of biological facts to the pursuit of hyper-theory and trivia, and when empiricists use experiments only to confirm their beliefs, it is the right and duty of New Students to throw off such Paradigms, and to provide new Assumptions for their future work. — Such has been the patient sufferance of students of evolutionary theory today; and such is now the necessity that motivates them to alter the former NeoDarwinian framework. The history of the NeoDarwinian Paradigm is a history of repeated false paradoxes and needless controversies all exercising an absolute Tyranny over the Science. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. The NeoDarwinian Paradigm has:
Assumed that macroevolution is nothing but the known microevolutionary processes, including selection, drift, mutation, etc., continued into vast expanses of time.
Led to sterile controversies over the units of selection, meaning of fitness, and utility of inclusive fitness.
Created various arbitrary dilemmas and paradoxes, like Haldane’s dilemma and Crozier’s paradox.
Created continual debate about the meaning of adaptive landscapes.
Obscured the causes of the sudden appearance of higher taxa in the fossil record and differential rates of evolution.
Taken apparent design in nature as evidence of the cause for origin.
Explained the ubiquity of sexual reproduction by models of the adaptive maintenance of sex.
Misrepresented Darwin as defining fitness as net reproductive success, and Fisher as invoking fitness maximization.
Led to ways of teaching evolution that obscure Darwin’s founding metaphors and assumptions.
Denied progress in evolution.
Argued that evolutionary theory can provide no foundation for ethics and can reveal no deeper meaning in life.
Viewed the world as resource limited, no matter how much life innovates.
Contended that biology, in contrast to physics, already has its grand unifying theory.
Favored goal-directed, incremental research and disfavored novel theorizing and risk-taking.
The NeoDarwinian paradigm has also harbored various macroevolutionary theories that invoke selection on long-preserved units or for ultimate effects, giving the appearance that microevolutionary theory explains macroevolution.
In consideration of these Confusions I have Petitioned for Clarity in the most straightforward terms. I have identified the single assumption held by all NeoDarwinian macroevolutionary theories, that natural selection is the only deterministic force of evolution, and I have proposed the theory of Natural Reward, which invokes natural reward as a separate force. My efforts have been answered by misrepresentations of my arguments.
Nor have I been unclear in my reasoning. I have pointed out the relationship to past theories. I have shown how evolution theory became constrained. I have synthesized available evidence. I must, therefore hold my colleagues, as I hold the rest of Mankind, Opponents in Debate, in Collaboration Friends.
I, therefore, appeal to the Supreme Judge of Posterity and solemnly publish an outline of the Theory of Natural Reward. This publication Absolves me from all Allegiance to the NeoDarwinian paradigm. As a Free and Independent Mind, I have full Power to Write Books, Develop Models, Test Hypotheses, and do all other Acts and Things that those employing New Theories have the right to do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Truth, I pledge to anyone who will join me my Mind, my Devotion, and my sacred Honor.
Owen Gilbert
Acknowledgments. Obviously, I imitated Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Ben Franklin apparently had a crucial editorial suggestion: “self-evident” rather than “sacred and undeniable.”