Word: synthesise
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Somehow. Mendel and Darwin joined forces. By 1950, their ideas were assimilated into a "modern synthesis." as Julian Huxley called it.
Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz professor of Zoology emeritus, was one of the architects of this synthesis. His Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) marked the climax of nearly three decades of work that spanned scientific disciplines and attacked the major problem left unsolved by Darwin, the origin of variation...
Mendel's studies on the inheritance of physical characteristics provided the missing link for Darwin's evolutionary theory. The synthesis of their ideas required the remarkable imagination and brashness of such scientists as Wright, Haldane, Fisher, Chetverikov, Mayr, Simpson, Dobzhansky, Jepsen and others working in population genetics, systematics, cytology, and...
Such a synthesis cannot fairly be called a scientific revolution because it does not drastically alter the view science presents of the world. It is more a "scientific fusion," a period when old facts are looked at in new ways. That is not to say that this period was without...
But besides the historical interest of this period, understanding the nature of the synthesis is important because a rival theory is currently being formulated in the rooms of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. The attack comes under many headings: "adaptationist critiques," "punctuated equilibrium," and others. But none of these names...