Just got here Milk-Drops.
What IS the theory of today?
Just quick...
The "Modern Synthesis" was the first reformulation of Darwinian theory. It used the re-discovery of Mendel's work. Ironically, Mendel, who was an evolutionist, sent Darwin his paper, but Darwin (who was flooded with unsolicited manuscripts) apparently never read it. Too bad; it cleared up a vexing problem with Darwin's theory.
If inheritance was in the blood, and like mixing paint, how could a new "sport" (we call them mutations now) persist in a population without being lost like a drop of red paint in a barrel of white paint? Mendel's insight was that it was like sorting beads, not like mixing paint.
The next reformulation involved neutralist theories that depended on statistical analysis of neutral or nearly neutral mutations.
Then the mechanism of DNA opened a new discipline, molecular biology, and this made some changes in Darwinian theory.
And then punctuated equilibrium put a new emphasis on something Darwin had briefly alluded to, the "Founder Effect" and the greater likelihood of speciation in small, isolated populations, followed by stasis in a constant environment.
And so on. Currently, there's a lot of work on the way evolution of epigenetic mechanisms works, and on non-coding DNA in molecular biology.
And perhaps most recently, the new science of evolutionary development is investigating how developmental genes have changed over time.
It's a lively science, with more to come. The interesting thing is, Darwin's five points of evolutionary theory remain as solid as they ever were. That's remarkable.
