Youve mentioned the terms or concepts of Darwinian synthesis as providing a lingua franka. Do you see signs that that may be changing?
A. Well, I mean, I think that — I mean the issue — the thing I raised earlier about there being all of these kind of conceptual problems that don’t get resolved and just kind of rumble along is indicative that it’s not clear what’s going to happen in the long-term. I think here, intelligent design, in a way, could be making some inroads. If one — if — I think there’s certain constituencies within the neo-Darwinian synthesis that, in a sense, could pull apart from the synthesis more easily than others. And in particular, I’m thinking of the people who work on computer modeling, who work, as one might say, the design side of evolution, the genetic side, the biochemical side, where people are very much thinking in terms of mechanisms normally. It seems to me that, there, it is possible for that to pull away from the more natural history paleontological side. So there’s no natural necessity that all these fields have to be together. And there’s a sense in which some of the stuff in int
