Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The concept of a biological species, developed by Mayr, actually explained only the way a species exists, but it was able to explain the process of speciation. Darwin had also failed to do this before. In both cases, this intellectual fiasco had an objective, albeit different, basis. The reason for Charles Darwin's failure was the lack of a corpuscular-constant theory of heredity recognized by the scientific community, as well as the lack of an idea of the elementary unit of evolution - the population. This made it impossible to form the concept of speciation. As a result, supporters of Darwin's teachings until the end of the 19th century focused their attention on the development of phylogenetic laws of evolution, based on the analysis of morphological, paleontological and embryological data. As for Mayr's failure, it was also systemic in nature: its source was the synthetic theory of biological evolution (STE), which describes the evolution of a species as the population dynamics of changes in the frequencies of exclusively structural genes. However, based on the population dynamics of changes in the frequencies of these genes, it was possible to explain only the mechanism of adaptive evolution, but it was impossible to explain what lies at the basis of the formation of a new species.
Author: Yu. V. Vagin
Institution: Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225190652