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Cited by 198

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The promise of paleobiology as a nomothetic, evolutionary discipline

Gould, Stephen Jay·1980·Paleobiology

Abstract

During the past 20 years, paleobiology has established the foundations of a nomothetic science based upon evolutionary theory. This radical break with a past philosophy based on irreducible historical uniqueness is still impeded by (1) overreliance upon the inductivist methodology that embodied this previous philosophy, and (2) an unadventurous approach to biology that attempts passively to transfer the orthodoxies of microevolutionary theory across vast stretches of time and several levels of a hierarchy into the domain of macroevolution. I analyze the major trends of recent invertebrate paleobiology in the light of these two impediments. The formulation, by paleobiologists and with paleobiological data, of new macroevolutionary theories should end the subservience of passive transfer and contribute, in turn, to the formulation of a new, general theory of evolution that recognizes hierarchy and permits a set of unifying principles to work differently at various levels.

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Metadata

Authors
Gould, S. J.
Venue
Paleobiology
Published
1980
Volume
6
Issue
1
Pages
96-118
ISSN
  • 0094-8373 (ISSN-L)
  • 1938-5331
OpenAlex
W1758567571
Cited by
198
References
3
FWCI
21.47
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The promise of paleobiology as a nomothetic, evolutionary discipline. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/s0094837300012537
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Gould, S. J. (1980). The promise of paleobiology as a nomothetic, evolutionary discipline. Paleobiology. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0094837300012537

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.