Architecture and Evolution

Abstract

ments. By analogy, Gould and Lewontin criticized arguments about evolution that emphasize immediate biological and pay little attention to other attributes of form. They decry, for ex? ample, various untestable specula? tions based on secondary utility of? fered to explain stunted front legs of a Tyrannosaurus; it makes far more sense, they contend, to accept its ab? normal form as the reduced product of conventionally functional homo logues in ancestors/' In other words, adaptationsim places so much faith in natural selection as an optimizing agent that an organism broken into unitary 'traits' and an adaptive story for each is proposed separately. In some cases, a viable explanation based on adaptation cannot be devised and should not be, Gould and Lewontin wrote. Gould and Lewontin's principal metaphor, based on so-called deco? rated spandrels of Saint Mark's Cathe