Editing Baldwin effect (section)

=="A New Factor in Evolution"==

The effect, then unnamed, was put forward in 1896 in a paper "A New Factor in Evolution" by the American [[psychologist]] [[James Mark Baldwin]], with a second paper in 1897.{{sfn|Baldwin|1896a}}{{sfn|Baldwin|1897}} The paper proposed a mechanism for specific selection for general learning ability. As the historian of science [[Robert J. Richards|Robert Richards]] explains:<ref name=Richards1987>{{cite book | last=Richards |first=Robert J. |author-link=Robert J. Richards | year=1987 | title=Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior| url=https://archive.org/details/darwinemergencee00rich | url-access=limited | publisher=The University of Chicago Press | isbn=978-0-226-71199-7 | page=[https://archive.org/details/darwinemergencee00rich/page/n410 399]}}</ref>

{{blockquote|If animals entered a new environment—or their old environment rapidly changed—those that could flexibly respond by learning new behaviours or by ontogenetically adapting would be naturally preserved. This saved remnant would, over several generations, have the opportunity to exhibit spontaneously congenital variations similar to their acquired traits and have these variations naturally selected. It would look as though the acquired traits had sunk into the hereditary substance in a Lamarckian fashion, but the process would really be [[Neo-Darwinism|neo-Darwinian]].<ref name=Richards1987/>}}

Selected offspring would tend to have an increased capacity for learning new skills rather than being confined to genetically coded, relatively fixed abilities. In effect, it places emphasis on the fact that the sustained behaviour of a species or group can shape the evolution of that species. The "Baldwin effect" is better understood in [[evolutionary developmental biology]] literature as a scenario in which a character or [[biological trait|trait]] change occurring in an [[organism]] as a result of its interaction with its environment [[genetic assimilation|becomes gradually assimilated]] into its developmental genetic or epigenetic repertoire.{{sfn|Simpson|1953}}{{sfn|Newman|2002}} In the words of the philosopher of science [[Daniel Dennett]]:<ref name=dennett03/>

{{blockquote|Thanks to the Baldwin effect, species can be said to pretest the efficacy of particular different designs by phenotypic (individual) exploration of the space of nearby possibilities. If a particularly winning setting is thereby discovered, this discovery will ''create'' a new selection pressure: organisms that are closer in the adaptive landscape to that discovery will have a clear advantage over those more distant.<ref name=dennett03/>}}

An update to the Baldwin effect was developed by [[Jean Piaget]], [[Paul Alfred Weiss|Paul Weiss]], and [[Conrad Waddington]] in the 1960s–1970s. This new version included an explicit role for the social in shaping subsequent natural change in humans (both evolutionary and developmental), with reference to alterations of selection pressures.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Burman |first=J. T. | year=2013 | title=Updating the Baldwin Effect: The biological levels behind Piaget's new theory | journal=New Ideas in Psychology | volume=31 | issue=3 | pages=363–373 | doi=10.1016/j.newideapsych.2012.07.003}}</ref>

Subsequent research shows that Baldwin was not the first to identify the process; [[Douglas Spalding]] mentioned it in 1873.<ref>Noble, R.; [[Denis Noble|Noble, D.]] (2017) Was the Watchmaker Blind? Or Was She One-Eyed? ''Biology'' 2017, 6(4), 47; doi:10.3390/biology6040047, quoting Bateson, P. The adaptability driver: Links between behaviour and evolution. Biol. Theory 2006, 1, 342–345. See also [[Stigler's law]].</ref>