Talk:Edward Drinker Cope

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To what extent was Cope's position 'a product of the times' - there were various theories which appeared to partly explain evolution, given the information available at the time and the absence of modern knowledge of eg genetics and genetic analysis? Anna Livia (talk) 20:14, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

As a paleontologist I feel uniquely qualified to answer this question: Cope was a product of his time in that Darwin's theories were insufficient to explain the actual causes of variation, and the works of Mendel weren't known at all yet, being heavily obscure. Once upon a time Neo-Lamarkism was a valid school of evolutionary thought, but Cope's and his fellow Neo-Lamarkist's ideas (*cough*Alpheus Hyatt*cough*) fell by the wayside once the results of Weissmann's studies were published, and other competing schools of evolutionary thought took prominence, such as orthogenesis. — Ɖøn Ĵuan ^Harass 20:41, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

One should know when historical period persons were being reasonable in the context of their times/exploring viable possibilities and extrapolating in what we now see as the wrong direction (eg steady state and expanding universe), and those which were 'born (not even) wrong': sometimes trying to prove something is the latter does lead to interesting results/new directions of research. As they say - hindsight is more perfect than present sight. Anna Livia (talk) 23:43, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, while Cope and his fellow non-Darwinian scientists may have ultimately lost out to the modern synthesis, science marches ever onward, and what were once thought to be obsolete crank ideas now turn out to have a bit more than a hollow ring to them, if you catch my drift. — Ɖøn Ĵuan ^Harass 23:55, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Will tweak the statement to the 'those propounding theories that were born (not even) wrong' that I meant.

And sometimes the difference between 'the causes' and 'the (collateral, accidental or unintended) effects' are not initially obvious (eg wolf-to-dog evolution); and how much will 'Lamarkian evolution' arise because those animals which cannot make use of the learned behaviour (for whatever genetic and other reasons) leave the particular herd/do not reproduce? Anna Livia (talk) 15:03, 3 January 2019 (UTC)