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This article sucks. It seems to exist mostly as a framework to air complaints about adaptationism and to consider alternatives. Instead it should focus on explaining what adaptationism means, and the role that it plays (and has played) in evolutionary research. There are many good resources on this topic. Here are some:

• The entry on adaptationism by Orzack in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
• Peter Godfrey-Smith's highly cited "Three Kinds of Adaptationism" pdf link
• the edited volume "Adaptation" by Rose and Lauder

Godfrey-Smith's article generated a lot of discussion among philosophers, e.g., Lewens later wrote an article entitled Seven types of adaptationism.

Again, the main focus should be explaining adaptationism. Once that is done, the next task is to address historical disputes and alternatives, like

• Gould and Lewontin's critique in The_Spandrels_of_San_Marco_and_the_Panglossian_Paradigm
• the responses: defenses of the adaptationist program by Mayr (1983; how to carry out the adaptaitonist program) and by Reeve and Sherman (1993)
• constraint as an alternative paradigm (Orzack has some guidance on this but it is too dismissive— I suspect others have done it better) or what Elisabeth Lloyd (2015) calls the "factors" view
• the quasi-mutationist agenda of explaining change, not in terms of pop-gen forces, but in terms of key mutations or developmental-genetic changes underlying evolutionary changes in traits. This is part of the evo-devo agenda (see Amundson 2005) and also is what Nei (2013) is about.
• mol evol, neutrality and generally "The molecular challenge to adaptationism" per Sarkar (2015)

Dabs (talk) 00:25, 5 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Priorities

• Rewrite the lede to focus on adaptationism and frame all of the topics relative to that
  • I got started on this. It still has too much non-adaptationism, but that can be whittled down when the succeeding sections cover the topics adequately Dabs (talk) 22:31, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
• possible section title: History and rationale for the adaptationist program Provide a sympathetic account of adaptationism drawing on the defenses by Mayr (1983) and Reeve and Sherman (1993) and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy account. This should include exmaples and it should include general statements like Mayr's claim about major advances in physiology "Considering the evident dangers of applying the adaptationist program, why are the Darwinians nevertheless so intent on applying it? The principal reason for this is its great heuristic value. The adaptationist question 'What is the function of a given structure or organ?' has been for centuries the basis for every advance in physiology. If it had not been for the adaptationist program, we probably would still not yet know the functions of thymus, spleen, pituitary, and pineal."
• possible section title: The critique of adaptationism recount the criticism by Gould and Lewontin and some of the responses. There is a separate article on the Spandrels paper, so it should not be emphasized here. This wikipedia article is about adaptationism, not anti-adaptationism
• as part of the above, list some of the alternative research agenda, pointing the reader to separate articles on neutral evolution, CNE, developmental bias, and self-organization. Again, these have separate articles and they are not the main focus here. Rather than trying to promote these ideas, just explain how they represent alternatives to adaptationism.
• possible section title: Philosophical issues raised by the adaptationism debate
  • integrate the claim of Orzack and Forber (stanford encyclopedia) that work by philosophers subsequent to the Spandrels paper has clarified the basis of adaptationism and the basis for alternatives.
  • explain the different versions of adaptationism (empirical, methodological, eplanatory) from Godfrey-Smith. Refer to some of the later literature.
  • address the role of definitions of "adaptation" following Reeve and Sherman and Lloyd 2015.
• possible section title: Current status and ongoing debates finish up with something about the current status of adaptationism and ongoing debates. For instance, there seems to be an endless debate about adaptationist excesses in sociobiology

Saying: "On the one hand, adaptation is obviously purposeful: natural selection chooses what works and eliminates what does not. On the other hand, biologists want to deny conscious purpose in evolution." There is no „purpose‟ of adaptation; it is simply natural selection, most certainly driven by Karl Friston´s Free Energy Principle and Active Inference. Even if somebody calls this a purpose, it´s never conscious, it’s systemic because it relies on fundamental physics. 84.226.226.180 (talk) 10:10, 15 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Needs more emphasis on the ideally adapted, and "just so stories" angle. Could be more nuanced, much of Gould's charge of "adaptationism" had a straw man flavour to it. He did accuse JMS of this, but perhaps better tagets could be identified here.

The definition provided here, "the view that all or most traits are optimal adaptations," is itself a straw man. No respected adaptationist takes this position. Instead, adaptationism is a research program that evaluates whether traits are adaptations, using standards of evidence such as functional design. Rather than assuming traits to be "optimal adaptations" as suggested here, most adaptationist researchers follow George Williams in asserting that adaptation is an "onerous concept" that should only be applied in light of strong evidence.

Agreed, I think what you say is how those Gould paints as "adaptationists" would describe their position. I'm not too happy with this article, because the charge being levied by Gould et al has to be described (and I'd say it's closer to the article than what you just wrote above), as does what the targets of the criticism would say (as you have it above), and there's this unsettling gulf in between. Please help fix, if you can muster the energy. Pete.Hurd 20:49, 7 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Finally got around to a little of this... I wonder if some of the issues in the EP article should be offloaded here (especially the adaptation/by-product/spandrel distinctions). 68.35.68.100 14:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How was this line:

"This is not to say that dyed-inthe-wool (???) do not exist."

Supposed to read?

On a personal note, I feel that anti-adaptationism has developed into a nasty form of dogma, and many of the zealots pushing it are completely over the top.

Codman 06:49, 5 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also with "pan-adaptationism". I think it is, unless there are subtle difference like the difference between neo-Darwinism and modern synthesis, which are often used interchangeably anyway. I´ll be putting these terms as synonyms, and linking a mention of "selectionism" (which have not its own article) on the mutationism article to this one.

PS.: I just realized that one can be a adaptationist or panadaptationist without being a selectionist, ie, being a creationist that sustains that every bit of a organism is somehow a optimal, divienly invented, adaption. So a selectionist would be someone who also sustains the part about the optimal adaptation, but also that the cause was natural selection rather than divine invention. However, usually they would be synonyms, unless the context specifies that someone is a creationist. --Extremophile 23:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please merge relevant content, if any, from Darwinian Fundamentalism per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Darwinian Fundamentalism. (If there is nothing to merge, just leave it as a redirect.) Thanks. —Quarl ^(talk) 2007-03-05 09:57Z

Stephen Jay Gould is described here as "Marxist-leaning". This is a charge which the adaptationist critics of Gould have managed to pin on him. On the Stephen Jay Gould entry on wiki, It states that while Gould grew up with a Marxist father, Gould considers his politics to be far different from his father's. This is cited by a source, unlike the "Marxist" moniker on this page. Also, it states on Gould's page that he is influenced, or at least sympathetic to Chomsky's political views, which is also cited. Chomsky is an anarchist, not a communist, and has attacked Marx, Hegel, and Lenin. Chomsky also uses the term "Stalinism" as a pejorative to describe governments that engage in censorship, or to condemn the doctrine of "official truth."

Also, I don't recall Gould being a member of any specific political group. He was active in the numerous civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s, but so was Dawkins. Also, Pinker is involved in Democratic party politics, so should we label him and his views politicized? I think the editors of wiki need to use more care in filtering out the ad hominems inherent in contentious debates. The "Marxist-leaning" moniker should be removed.72.92.17.240 (talk) 23:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I added the NPOV tag for this same reason. Lewontin and Gould's criticisms of adaptationism are based on science, not political ideology. Many discussions of evolutionary biology (and psychology) are in fact colored enormously by political ideology. Many of Dawkins' ideas, for example, arguably represent or stem from a "Capitalist Biology" just as ridiculous and unscientific as the "Soviet Biology" that is frequently pointed out as being bad science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.94.40.190 (talk) 15:17, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the fact that Lewontin and Gould's questions are inspired by Marxism (an assertion supported by the leading scholars on the topic, eg look up Gould in the index of Segerstrale's book and then look for the subsection titled "Marx", or writings such as the preface to Levins & Lewontin's "The Dialectical Biologist". Note also The Dialectical Biologist is dedicated to Fredrick Engels) implies that the methods they use to answer those questions aren't scientifically based (Davis 1983 being perhaps an exception). The idea that if they were Marixsts (or Marx inspired) that they cannot have been good scientists is a non-sequitor. It is inaccurate to represent scholarship on this topic as if Marxism did not have a profound influence on the thought of these individuals. Pete.Hurd (talk) 21:55, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The second author is right, this theory is well-discussed in the literature and at scientific meetings, so it is fully appropriate to have it put forward as a hypothesis here. I have removed this tag. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.130.132.91 (talk) 16:42, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As people were disagreeing with some stuff I removed the section about Marxism. Come on now, this is a scientific issue with evidence for an against and serious disagreement with good points on both sides and ultimately there is a way to reconcile these views in a reasonable way. This has nothing to do with Karl Marx or political theories. So, just drop it! Science doesn't comment on politics. Ideas in science are not evaluated with the same methods as the humanities or philosophy/religion. Both the sociobiologists have mentioned this extensively and Gould is actually famous for his idea of Non-Overlapping Magisteria so all of that crap is irrelevant. All sides including those in the middle such as me agree that this is to be debated on material merits.

Anyway: I added the sections about constraints because the fact that these constraints exist and that there is evidence for them which fits into evolutionary theory and biology at large I thought they should be included because they exist in defiance of the idea that evolution builds perfection.

I'd also recommend getting rid of the redirect "Darwinian fundamentalism" that is just a creationist ploy to equate evolution with a supernatural philosophy or religion. I don't know how to do delete this but someone should. It's only ever called adaptationism or the "adapative perspective" or some permutation on that. it might be called something else outside of the english language but i don't know

This isn't a very frequently trafficed page I just thought I'd add such because it's so devoid of actual content. When I have time I'll drop back in and add references. Just don't freak out, these are well established. Some of the references I have in mind are Niel Shubin's book "your inner fish" and some other more obscure texts.

Sometime soon i'll add a section about self organization and another section about evolutionary by-products because these give us a more accurate conception of evolution.

Finally, I agree with the below poster that "the view that adaptations are optimal is wrong. It's really hard to put into words. I can't come up with a good alternative but you're right that the current version is horribly wrong. Even Stephen Pinker has said that he doesn't think that all traits are adapations. --66.41.31.163 (talk) 22:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The new material shows promise, so I spent some time doing copy editing. However, much of the text currently is original research, that is, an opinion of an editor. It needs to be fixed by adding references. Also, further editing is needed. Johnuniq (talk) 02:06, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This paragraph from the article:

"Adaptationism could also be characterized as an approach to studying evolution of form and function that attempts to frame the existence and persistence of traits on the scenario that each of them arose independently due to how that trait improved the reproductive success of the organism's ancestors. Adaptationism is also a description of "folk biology" where non-experts see that in general organisms have an amazing array of adaptations, then apply this principle too broadly and describe everything as adaptive."

is an example of terrible writing, and this article is full of this kind of pretentious, wordy, run-on-sentence, weaselly, crap. This article needs a serious re-write. Mc4th (talk) 22:39, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Some rewording may be desirable, but your recent edits may also need some work. You changed an 's' to 'z' to make "emphasizes", but a quick scan of the article suggests that it is in British English, and so per WP:ENGVAR the style should not be changed. Also, the sentence "The term adaptation may also apply to a slow, usually unconscious modification of individual and social activity in adjustment to cultural surroundings." added to the lead is out of place (it belongs in another article that is not dedicated to the evolutionary term, and items in the lead should summarize material that is already present in the article, and is unsourced, see WP:LEAD). Johnuniq (talk) 04:15, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I created a redirect to this page from "adaptionism", which I discovered today is frequently misused in scholarly settings to mean "adaptationism". See [1] and [2] -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 04:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]