This paper analyses the broad methodological structure of population-biological theorising. In it, I show that the distinction between initial exploratory, hypothesis-generating research and the subsequent process-reconstructing, hypothesis-testing type of research is not being made. Rather, the hypotheses generated in population biology are elaborated in such detail that students confound the initial research phase with the subsequent hypotheses-testing phase of research. In this context, I therefore analyse some testing procedures within the exploration phase and show that, as an extreme form of (...) confusion, statistical null-models are mistakenly given the status of causal population-biological theory. (shrink)

Sewall Wright introduced the metaphor of evolution on “adaptive landscapes” in a pair of papers published in 1931 and 1932. The metaphor has been one of the most influential in modern evolutionary biology, although recent theoretical advancements show that it is deeply flawed and may have actually created research questions that are not, in fact, fecund. In this paper I examine in detail what Wright actually said in the 1932 paper, as well as what he thought of the matter at (...) the very end of his career, in 1988. While the metaphor is flawed, some of the problems which Wright was attempting to address are still with us today, and are in the process of being reformulated as part of a forthcoming Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. (shrink)