Organic selection: Proximate environmental effects on the evolution of morphology and behaviour [Book Review]

Biology and Philosophy 16 (2):215-237 (2001)
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Abstract

Organic selection (the Baldwin Effect) by which an environmentally elicitedphenotypic adaptation comes under genotypic control following selectionwas proposed independently in 1896 by the psychologists James Baldwinand Conwy Lloyd Morgan and by the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn.Modified forms of organic selection were proposed as autonomization bySchmalhausen in 1938, as genetic assimilation by Waddington in 1942, andas an explanation for evolution in changing environments or for speciationby Matsuda and West-Eberhard in the 1980s. Organic selection as amechanism mediating proximate environmental effects on the evolution ofmorphology and behaviour is the topic of this essay. Discussion includesthe context in which organic selection was proposed, Lamarckian or neo-Lamarckian implications of organic selection, Waddingtons experimentalstudies demonstrating the existence and efficacy of genetic assimilation,stabilizing selection and norms of reaction favoured by Schmalhausen, andMatsudas search for a mechanism of organic selection in endocrine changesand in heterochrony.

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References found in this work

Animal Species and Evolution.Ernst Mayr - 1963 - Belknap of Harvard University Press.
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.David L. Hull - 1997 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3):435-438.
Darwin's Dangerous Idea.Daniel Dennett - 1994 - Behavior and Philosophy 24 (2):169-174.
Evolution: The Modern Synthesis.Julian Huxley - 1944 - Philosophy 19 (73):166-170.

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