Gradualism
Gradualism, from the Latin gradus ("step"), is a hypothesis, a theory or a tenet assuming that change comes about gradually or that variation is gradual in nature and happens over time as opposed to in large steps.[1] Uniformitarianism, incrementalism, and reformism are similar concepts. For the Social democratics, the socialist society is achieved through gradualism.
Geology and biology
In the natural sciences, gradualism is the
Charles Darwin was influenced by Lyell's Principles of Geology, which explained both uniformitarian methodology and theory. Using uniformitarianism, which states that one cannot make an appeal to any force or phenomenon which cannot presently be observed (see catastrophism), Darwin theorized that the evolutionary process must occur gradually, not in saltations, since saltations are not presently observed, and extreme deviations from the usual phenotypic variation would be more likely to be selected against.
Gradualism is often confused with the concept of phyletic gradualism. It is a term coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge to contrast with their model of punctuated equilibrium, which is gradualist itself, but argues that most evolution is marked by long periods of evolutionary stability (called stasis), which is punctuated by rare instances of branching evolution.[2]
Politics and society
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This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
— Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, delivered August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.[4]
Linguistics and language change
In linguistics, language change is seen as gradual, the product of chain reactions and subject to cyclic drift.[5] The view that creole languages are the product of catastrophism is heavily disputed.[6][7]
Morality
Christianity
Buddhism, Theravada and Yoga
Gradualism is the approach of certain schools of Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies (e.g.
Types
Phyletic gradualism is a model of evolution which theorizes that most speciation is slow, uniform and gradual.[10] When evolution occurs in this mode, it is usually by the steady transformation of a whole species into a new one (through a process called anagenesis). In this view no clear line of demarcation exists between an ancestral species and a descendant species, unless splitting occurs.
Punctuated gradualism is a microevolutionary hypothesis that refers to a species that has "relative stasis over a considerable part of its total duration [and] underwent periodic, relatively rapid, morphologic change that did not lead to lineage branching". It is one of the three common models of evolution. While the traditional model of palaeontology, the phylogenetic model, states that features evolved slowly without any direct association with speciation, the relatively newer and more controversial idea of punctuated equilibrium claims that major evolutionary changes do not happen over a gradual period but in localized, rare, rapid events of branching speciation. Punctuated gradualism is considered to be a variation of these models, lying somewhere in between the phyletic gradualism model and the punctuated equilibrium model. It states that speciation is not needed for a lineage to rapidly evolve from one equilibrium to another but may show rapid transitions between long-stable states.
Contradictorial gradualism is the paraconsistent treatment of fuzziness developed by Lorenzo Peña which regards true contradictions as situations wherein a state of affairs enjoys only partial existence.
Gradualism in
In the terminology of NWO-related speculations, gradualism refers to the gradual implementation of a totalitarian world government.
See also
- Evolution
- Uniformitarianism
- Incrementalism
- Normalization (sociology)
- Reformism
- Catastrophism
- Saltation
- Punctuated equilibrium
- Accelerationism
- Boiling frog
References
- ISBN 978-0521048170
- ^ Eldredge, Niles, and S. J. Gould (1972). "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism". In T.J.M. Schopf, ed., Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper and Company, pp. 82-115.
- ^ Paul Blackledge (2013). "Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today". International Socialist Journal. Retrieved 14 November 2013.
- ^ King, Martin Luther (August 28, 1963). "I have a dream speech". Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ Henri Wittmann (1983). "Les réactions en chaîne en morphologie diachronique". Actes du Colloque de la Société internationale de linguistique fonctionnelle 10.285-92.[1][permanent dead link]
- ^ Classic presentations of catastrophe theory include René Thom, Stabilité structurelle et morphogénèse. Reading MA: Benjamin, 1972; Monte Davis and Alexander Woodcock, Catastrophe Theory. NY: Dutton, 1978; and Saunders, An Introduction to Catastrophe Theory. Cambridge University Press, 1980.
- ^ For a more-recent overview on the pidgin/creole language-change literature, see Sarah C. Thomasen, "Pidgins/Creoles and Historical Linguistics", esp. 246-60, in Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler, eds., The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. London: John Wiley, 2009. books.google.com/books?id=AyFK3L-U_PIC&pg=PA246
and
ISBN 9781444305999
- ^ Bernard Faure, Chan/Zen Studies in English: The State Of The Field
- ^ Gregory, Peter N., ed. (1991), Sudden and Gradual. Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited
- ^ Eldredge, N. and S. J. Gould (1972). "Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism" In T.J.M. Schopf, ed., Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper. p. 84.