The wolf skinner

"Basic Questions in Paleontology" is the magnum opus of Otto Schindewolf, an outspoken critic of Darwinian evolution but also one of the leading palaeontologists in West Germany during the immediate post-war decades. His book was published in 1950, but didn't become available in English until 1994. Unsurprisingly, Stephen Jay Gould has written the introduction to the American edition. To most laymen in the creation-evolution controversy, Schindewolf is only known from a supposed misquotation in one of Duane Gish's creationist books. I no longer remember the details, but it seems Schindewolf really did say that the first bird hatched from a reptilian egg. More disturbingly, at least from a Darwinian viewpoint, he seems to have meant it, too...

Schindewolf's book is super-scholarly and definitely not an introductory or popularized work (the "review" claiming otherwise was obviously posted by a troll). I haven't been able to digest this work myself, except in very small doses. However, if you have a degree in the natural sciences or want to take the evolution-creation controversy to a stunning new level, I suppose "Basic Questions in Paleontology" might be your kind of book. It does seem somewhat easier to digest than "The Material Basis of Evolution" by that other notorious anti-Darwinist heretic, Richard Goldschmidt. (Guess who wrote the introduction to the new edition?)

The main lines of argument in Schindewolf's book are roughly as follows. Evolution of entirely new structures is never gradual, but takes place in sudden leaps. These are caused by ontogenetic factors (presumably macro-mutations causing decisive genetic changes in the embryo). Evolution goes through several different phases. In the first phase, there is a sudden spurt or explosion, in which a wide variety of different forms evolve from a single ancestral stem. (A bit like the Cambrian explosion.) In a later phase, the various new organisms "settle down" and keep evolving at a much smaller, gradual pace. During this phase, the standard Darwinian scenario applies. During the last phase, organisms become grossly overspecialized and degenerate, and eventually die off. Only less specialized lineages survive.

To Schindewolf, these three phases of evolution aren't simply an artefact of the fossil record or a purely empirical description of how evolution happens to look like. No, Schindewolf believed that he was describing real laws of evolution, laws presumably rooted in the deeper genetic structures of the organisms. As far as I understand, Gould didn't think of the punctuated equilibria as a "law" in this strong sense. Nor did Gould (as far as I have seen) discuss degeneration. Otherwise, there is an obvious family resemblance between Gould's theory - at least as popularly interpreted - and Schindewolf's speculations.

Schindewolf's alternative to Neo-Darwinism is known as "saltationism". Interestingly, Schindewolf regarded his saltationism as a strictly materialist, almost mechanical, theory. This has not stopped creationists from being interested in Schindewolf, Goldschmidt and Gould, since they feel that saltationism is similar to creationism, a kind of secularized version of "old earth creationism" and therefore illogical without miraculous input. Of course, the creationist quote-mining machine will find a lot of gold in Schindewolf's work, including his claim that the fossil record *isn't* grossly incomplete.

Judging by Gould's introduction and Wolf Reif's concluding essay, there was a political dimension to saltationism, as well. Schindewolf counterposed it rather sharply to the vitalist speculations common in Germany, especially during the Nazi period. This was connected to Schindewolf's own politics, a brand of anti-Nazi conservatism. Note also the claim that most evolutionary lineages eventually degenerate due to overspecialization, leaving only the more "plain" lineages. This could be applied to human society, as well. Perhaps modern, hyper-complex society is really an overspecialized, degenerate cul-de-sac, like the mastodon or the Irish elk? Perhaps a less complex society is more sturdy and adaptive?

The conservative implications of Schindewolf's theories are interesting, especially since Gould was a pseudo- or crypto-Marxist. Dawkins may have been on to something when he said that the really innovative contribution of "punctuated equilibrium" to evolutionary theory isn't the rapid pace of evolution at certain junctures, but rather the claim that evolution during long periods doesn't seem to happen at all!

"Basic Questions in Paleontology" didn't shake the world of Darwinian evolution to its foundations when published in English in 1994, but who knows what the future might bring.

A punctuated equilibrium, perhaps?