Confusion With Punctuated Equilibrium
It is a popular misconception that punctuated equilibrium is a saltationist theory, often mistaken for Richard Goldschmidt's hypothesis of "Hopeful Monsters." However, punctuated equilibrium refers instead to a pattern of evolution where most speciation occurs relatively rapidly from a geological perspective (tens of thousands of years instead of millions of years), but through neo-Darwinian evolution, not by saltations.
Read more about this topic: Saltation (biology)
Famous quotes containing the words confusion and/or equilibrium:
“There is ... no glamor at banquets—I mean the large formal banquets of big associations and societies. There is only a kind of dignified confusion that gradually unhinges the mind.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)