A teoria da evolução entre a teleologia e a síntese contemporânea

Abstract

The book Origin of Species Charles Darwin is a milestone in science, both for its evolutionary approach the origin of species, as for its argumentative strategy in favor of the hypothesis that natural selection is its main mechanism. Darwin called his book of "one long argument", and this argument, the work is structured with the principle of natural selection as its main axis constant biological in nature that determines which species will be preserved and which shall be extinct, the preservation variations useful to their owners in the face of their "living conditions" and extinction of injurious to them. The evolutionary synthesis consists of the union between the naturalistic bias that directly descended from thinking of Darwin, and geneticists (empiricist) that rekindle Mendel to develop their research in genetics, these two apparently distinct areas are reconciled and so the synthesis is developed. The extended synthesis is the theory of evolution previously described joining the new discoveries and the development of molecular techniques that enabled the discovery of the structure of DNA and the genome project. The overall objective of this dissertation is to argue in favor of a modification of a teleological theory (Darwin) to a non-teleological theory (extended synthesis). The specific objectives are to analyze Darwin's theory developed in the Origin, analyze the construction of the synthesis and finally analyze the components of the extended synthesis. To respond to the overall objective are described Darwin's theory, synthesis and extended synthesis, and analyzed how we can find teleological notions regarding causality. Through this analysis, I could see that causality in Darwin is teleological, but is included in a different kind of teleology for causality not be intentional. In the extended synthesis, due to advances in research, that the theory of evolution loses this teleological notion regarding causality.