Debate
Adaptationism is sometimes characterized by critics as an unsubstantiated assumption that all or most traits are optimal adaptations. Critics (most notably Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould) contend that the adaptationists (John Maynard Smith, W.D. Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett being frequent examples) have over-emphasized the power of natural selection to shape individual traits to an evolutionary optimum, and ignored the role of developmental constraints, and other factors to explain extant morphological and behavioural traits.
Adaptationism could also be characterized as an approach to studying evolution of form and function that attempts to frame the existence and persistence of traits on the scenario that each of them arose independently due to how that trait improved the reproductive success of the organism's ancestors. Adaptationism is also a description of "folk biology" where non-experts see that, in general, organisms have an amazing array of adaptations, then apply this principle too broadly and describe everything as adaptive.
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