Ernst Mayr

Question 1

How and why does evolution take place: Different types of thinking

Answer 1

Typological Thinking (Essentialism): Transmutational thinking
Transformational thinking

Population thinking: Variational evolution

Finalism

Question 2

Typological Thinking (Essentialism)

Answer 2

Essentialism was the almost universally held worldview from ancients until Darwin’s time. Essentialism taught that all seemingly variable phenomena of nature could be sorted into classes. Each class characterized by its definition. Early pre-Darwin evolutionists adopted a weak version of this essentialism by allowing gradual change.

Question 3

Population thinking

Answer 3

Darwin made a radical break with the typological tradition fop essentialism by initiating an entirely new way of thinking. Organisms are variable populations. Darwin’s new thinking was based on the study of populations. Population thinking is the foundation of modern evolutionary theory.

Question 4

Finalism

Answer 4

Non-Darwinian this was the believe that the living world has the propensity to move toward ever greater perfection.

Question 5

Transmutationism

Answer 5

Evolution occurs through the production of new species or types owing to a mutation or saltation

Question 6

Transformationism

Answer 6

Evolution occurs through the gradual transformation of an existing species or type into a new one either.

(1) By direct influence of the environment or by use and disuse of the existing phenotype
(2) By an intrinsic drive towards a definite goal
(3) Through an inheritance of acquired characters

Question 7

Variational evolution

Answer 7

a population of species change through the continuous production of new genetic variation.

Question 8

The frontiers of evolutionary biology

Answer 8

There are suggestions that genotypes were less tightly constrained at the beginning of the existence of the Metazoa that for 200-300 million years in the late Precambrian or early Precambrian no fewer than 70 or 80 new structural types evolved.
Only about 35 are now left none of them have changed drastically however there have been remarkable radiations, such as in insects and the vertebrates.