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A Conversation with Ernst Mayr A Conversatonwith... Ernst Mayr NeilA. Campbell Ernst Mayr is one of the there, the American Museum of Natural History in greatestinfluences on evolu- New York needed an ornithologist on their expedi- tionarybiology since Darwin. tion, which was cruising in the seas near New Mayr was one of the archi- Guinea, and so I joined them. I spent the next nine ifA ; ^Jx -< tectsof the evolutionarysyn- months on a schooner in the Solomon Islands. It was thesis of the 1930s and 40s, 2/2 years before I finally came back to Berlin. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/54/7/412/45847/4449530.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 whichunified biology by inte- Later I was invited by the American Museum of 4 ~ ^ grating Darwin's theory of Natural History to come to New York for a year, but natural selection with new my temporary visiting job became a permanent job discoveriesin genetics,pale- when the museum bought the Rothschild bird collec- ontology and taxonomy. tion and I stayed with the American Museum from 'C ~:. :.f ~ Mayr basedhis views on ev- 1931 to 1953. Then I became a professor at the olution on relation- Museum of ComparativeZoology at Harvard. Ernst mainly Mayr ships of bird speciesthat he studied on Pacific islands. Now 89 years old, Mayr, NC: So you, like Darwin, were a naturalist on a professoremeritus at Harvard,is still going strong and major expedition in your early 20s. Tell us a little generatingexciting new ideas.His latestbook, One Long more about your joumey and how that early field Argument (HarvardUniversity Press, 1991), analyzes work influenced your thinking about evolution. Darwin'stheories. We interviewedProfessor Mayr at his Mayr:My task in New Guinea, given to me by Lord summercottage in New Hampshire. Rothschild, was to find the home of some rare birds of paradise that had been collected by the plume NC: Dr. Mayr, how did you become a naturalist? hunters for hat decorations, but had not since been Mayr: I was a naturalist ever since I could walk. My encountered. Each mountain range in New Guinea parents were very much interested in nature and took has its endemic species of birds; the mountains are me and my two brothers out to watch birds, to collect like islands in the sky, as they have sometimes been fossils, to find spring flowers and everything else. So, called. Geographic speciation takes place on these I ardently followed all of these things, but particularly mountain tops just as it takes place on islands in the birds. Since I came from a medical family-there were ocean. four generations of medical doctors preceding me-I After New Guinea I came to the Solomon Islands, was supposed to be the medical doctor of my gener- where we went on our schooner from island to ation. So I went to medical school, but I also became island. There is no place in the world in which a volunteer at the Berlin Natural History Museum geographic speciation is as well demonstrated as in and that led to my giving up my medical studies. the changes from island to island in the Solomon After I had my Ph.D., which I got at the age of 21, I Islands. And that, more than almost anything else, was introduced to Lord Rothschild in England, who was the basis of my 1942 book, Systematicsand the sent me on an expedition to New Guinea. While I was Origin of Species,which was one of the books that contributedto the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 40s. It is indeed true, just as Wallace had found Thisinterview is one of eight that will appear in TheAmerican in the Indonesian islands, and Darwin in the Galapa- Biology Teacher through May 1993. All are excerpted from gos, that islands are the best place in which to conversations between eminent biologistsand Neil A. Camp- demonstrate speciation. One of the things that I bell, author of the textbook Biology(Benjamin/Cummings Pub- lishingCo., Redwood City,CA). followed up later in life was to see if geographic The interviewsintroduce each unit of the third edition of separation also caused speciation on continents. In- Biology.Campbell taught general biology at CornellUniversity, deed it does. Wherever there are barriers, due to Pomona College and San BernardinoValley College for 21 years. He is now at the Uniersity of California, Rierside. water, mountains or vegetational changes, speciation can occur. 412 THEAMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 54, NO. 7, OCTOBER1992 NC: Can you provide some historical perspective Darwin really begin to influence your view of the about the evolutionary synthesis and your role in its world? development? Mayr: Well, I wasn't nearly as much aware at that Mayr: When I was a student in Germany, I was a time that it was a Darwinian influence. I just gradu- Lamarckian,which shocks some people. But at that ally realized that natural selection can do far more time it made more sense than the view of the Men- than I thought when I was younger. I didn't read delians that all new species originate from macromu- Darwin's Originof Speciesuntil after I had published tations and that a new species is formed at once by my Systematicsand the Originof the Species.But then, one individual becoming the first representative of particularlyin the 1960s, I became very much aware the new species. The gradual speciation that I saw of the really great importance of Darwin. fitted in far better with Lamarckism. In the 1920s, there was still total disagreement NC: And your latest book is about Darwin's ideas. among biologists as to what was the truth about Mayr:The reason I wrote this book is that most of the evolution and what were the mechanisms of evolu- books on Darwin speak about Darwinism as if it was tion. The theory of natural selection was clearly a a single, monolithic theory. In reality, Darwin had a minority viewpoint. Then, rather rapidly, in the great many theories. What I've tried to do is to Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/54/7/412/45847/4449530.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 1930s and 40s, all the difficultiesseemed to evaporate separate these major theories and discuss them indi- and a modern picture of evolution originated. vidually-where Darwin got his ideas, how valid The three majorcontributions of the synthesis were they were, when they were accepted by other people, the following. First, it refuted all the opposing theo- and so forth. I've found in the literaturethat there are ries, such as Lamarckism, that believed there was seven or eight different meanings of the word Dar- some intrinsic force in organisms that would lead to winism for different people. In Darwin's own time, improvement or evolutionary change and a more for instance, Darwinism meant evolution without perfect adaptation. The second contribution was to supernaturalcausation-nothing more, nothing less. supplement the evolutionary concepts of the geneti- Today, Darwinism means the theory of naturalselec- cists of that period, who concentrated entirely on tion. But natural selection was almost totally ignored adaptive changes within a population. You won't in Darwin's time. find anything in their writings about the origin of evolutionary diversity. Adaptation and the origin of diversity are the two major components of evolution. NC: Speaking of Darwin's time, if you could go back My contributionto the evolutionary synthesis was to to that time and actually visit with Darwin, what introduce the study of diversity, the explanation of would you ask him? species, of how they originate, and how one gets Mayr: You will be very much surprised when you from there to the higher taxonomic categories. The hear my answer. I would ask him about his relationto third major contribution was that there were many religion, to a belief in a personal God. Did his loss of disparate disciplines at that time and people in dif- belief precede or follow his development of the ferent fields were hardly on speaking terms with each concept of natural selection. What went on in his other, like paleontologists and geneticists; and the mind, particularlyin relation to general things like botanists were way outside. The evolutionarysynthe- belief in religion, is something that he always care- sis brought them together, and that's why the word fully concealed in his writings, particularlysince his synthesis is so often used for this unificationof biology wife Emma was a deeply devout person. But it is through the acceptanceof Darwinianevolution. rather obvious from his handwritten notes that he didn't believe in a personal God. Furthermore,to me it seems obvious that he lost his belief in God at least NC: Did you and the other architects of the Evolu- a year, if not two, before he developed his theory of tionary Synthesis actually collaborate? natural selection. So the claim that biology and a Mayr:Curiously enough, very little. Dobzhansky and belief in naturalselection is dangerous because it may I saw each other a couple of times before I wrote my make you lose your faith in God, is not substantiated. book and I showed him my island birds. But other- That's a very important thing to know. wise we had very little contact. Simpson did his thing entirely by himself, and so did Stebbins in botany. NC: What could you tell Darwin that would help The major evolutionary theorists never had a joint him with his ideas about evolution? symposium until after the synthesis was completed Mayr: Well, I would just convey to him what we and they wrote their books independently.
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