The great central dome of St Mark’s Cathedral in Venice presents in its mosaic design a detailed iconography expressing the mainstays of Christian faith. Since Darwin has attained sainthood among evolutionary biologists, and since all sides invoke God’s allegiance, Darwin has often been depicted as a radical selectionist at heart who invoked other mechanisms only in retreat, and only as a result of his age’s own lamented ignorance about the mechanisms of heredity. In continental Europe, evolutionists have never been much attracted to the Anglo-American penchant for atomizing organisms into parts and trying to explain each as a direct adaptation. Developmental constraints, a subcategory of phyletic restrictions, may hold the most powerful rein of all over possible evolutionary pathways. A pluralistic view could put organisms, with all their recalcitrant, yet intelligible, complexity, back into evolutionary theory.
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