neo-Darwinistn.adj.

1891 L. F. Ward in Glimpses of Cosmos (1915) IV. 257 There is strictly speaking only one prominent question before the biological world and that is the question whether qualities that are acquired after birth are capable of being transmitted to descendants. Darwinism in its original entirety..admits such transmission. But by the new school of neo-Darwinists this is denied.

1922 V. Kellogg Human Life ii. 57 Altruism..is just as truly a fundamental biologic factor of evolution as is the cruel, strictly self-regarding, exterminating kind of struggle for existence with which the Neo-Darwinists try to fill our eyes and ears.

1972 Listener 3 Aug. 138/2 You have said one or two things which would be regarded by neo-Darwinists as treasonable.

2000 A. Milne Sci. Catastrophic Events iv. 47 Most evolutionary biologists are closet neo-Darwinists to avoid having to invent a creator or being labeled as vitalists.

1954 Q. Rev. Biol. 29 354/2 Is the neo-Darwinist view not too mechanical, too dependent upon chance, and too arbitrary in excluding the possible significance of final causes?

1974 Evolution 28 631/1 A better method is to select for behavioral changes and see if results conform with expectations of neodarwinist theory.

1987 Brit. Jrnl. Philos. Sci. 38 413 The gene is not quite the permanent entity that bean-bag genetics [and] neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory..assume it to be.

2001 U.S. News & World Rep. Special Coll. Ed.: Mysteries of Faith 49/1 Atheistic naturalism, says Johnson, ‘is not merely the conclusion that neo-Darwinists draw from their scientific theory’ but rather ‘the metaphysical basis of the theory itself’.