The Modern Synthesis

Dickins, T.E. (2021.) The Modern Synthesis: Evolution and the Organization of Information. Springer

This monograph is about recent claims that the Modern Synthesis is not conceptually fit for purpose in the light of new findings in biology.  In particular the book addresses claims from developmental biology and seeks to defend the Modern Synthesis by inspecting the uses of information concepts in the literature. The following quote from the Preface gives a sense of the overall book project:

I describe this book as an Easter Egg. The outer shell, which is the initial presentation the reader meets, is a negative thesis: I do not think any of the proposals for an Extended Synthesis work in their own terms for analytic reasons that I give. Of course, in doing this I am aware that I am presenting my own axiomatic take on things, but my hope is that in explicitly exposing that it will at least help to clarify the mechanics of the debate.  But inside the Easter Egg is a positive thesis. I think that a principal source of disagreement between those defending the Modern Synthesis and those advocating for extension has been around the concept of information. Information has been persistently used to make claims for and about the Modern Synthesis, most especially with reference to genes and developmental programs, and this usage has been loose and colloquial. As a result, a semantic view of information, of information as something contentful and out in the world to be harvested, to deliver instruction, has come to be the default interpretation of information. Information has been objectified and this is a mistake. Information is instead a functional relationship between an input and a system, between data and context. This view sees information as something realized by systems. In this sense information is the consequence of the proximate operations of biological systems, and evolution organizes those systems, and hence organizes information. I think this view of information is embedded within the Modern Synthesis, and I demonstrate this by applying it to relevant arguments throughout the book. But it is also a view closely aligned with aspects of developmental systems theory, which has strongly influenced the movement for extension of the Modern Synthesis. My belief is that acceptance of this view of information will lead to a different understanding of the Modern Synthesis, and remove the critical claims based around gene centrism. (Dickins, 2021)

You can read an unedited, pre-review preprint of Chapter 1 by clicking on the link in the table of contents.