Eva Jablonka: Inheritance Systems and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

There is a debate among evolutionary biologists today about the need to significantly revise the neo-Darwinian model of evolution that was dominant over the last seventy years. After presenting the views for and against the revision, I discuss the challenges to the traditional theory that are coming from an expanded notion of heredity, focusing on the evolutionary implications of epigenetic and cultural inheritance. I suggest that these challenges require a reformulation of basic assumptions of the dominant neo-Darwinian version of evolutionary theory and the construction of a new, extended and revised evolutionary thought-style.

Eva Jablonka, Cohn Institute for the History of Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University
April 23, 2021