Marc Swetlitz, dissertation student; topic: "Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson and the Idea of Progress in 20th-Century Evolutionary Biology." Mr. Swetlitz is focussing his doctoral dissertation research on the development, context and nature of the disagreements between Julian Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson over the definition of, evidential support for, and the implications of the idea of evolutionary progress. Their divergent views on the idea of progress--directional evolutionary change for the better--can be understood best by exploring the disagreements between them regarding the issues of evolutionary patterns and ethics, topics which remain controversial in today's scientific community. This study begins in 1900 and explores the development of Huxley's idea of evolutionary progress which was shaped by his Oxford education and contemporary views of fossil patterns as primarily unidirectional and determinate. By the 1940's an alternative interpretation of fossil patterns as multi- directional and plastic had become predominant and Simpson, a leader in this transformation, rejected Huxley's attempt to ground ethics in evolutionary trends. This divergence influenced the interaction between Huxley and Simpson, affected their research programs, and determined their opposite reactions to Teilhard de Chardin, the French paleontologist-priest whose evolutionary theology captured the imagination of many scientists in the 1960's.
