Sure, in any direction consistent with an outmoded materialism. And how sweeping grandeur in that vision of life is entailed?
There’s no need to formally revisit the Modern Synthesis, argues Douglas Futuyma, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, because evolutionary theory is flexible enough to incorporate well-substantiated new ideas as they arise. “I think the evolutionary synthesis has already been extending itself almost continually for the last few decades,” he says. “I’m not saying that there’s nothing interesting [in the Extended Synthesis]. I just think the self-conscious labeling of it as a new point of view or a challenge to the old, most people don’t buy.”
Most dare not buy any new approaches. No as long as they can stumble to the pay wicket through a mass of contradictions and contrary evidence.
Nothing can contradict a poorly supported idea, of little substance to begin with, and fixed on place by a solid block of iron rice bowls. Nothing but facts, which matter little in an environment where students must pay for this guy’s textbooks.
