punctuationism
nounEtymology From punctuation + -ism.
1
Government, Politics In evolutionary biology, belief that evolution does not proceed at a steady pace, but instead is characterized by periods of stasis, punctuated by brief (within several hundred-thousand years) periods of rapid change.
- Gould has misled himself by his own rhetorical emphasis on the purely poetic or literary resemblance between punctuationism, on the one hand, and true saltationism on the other.1986, Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, W. W. Norton & Company, published 2015, →ISBN:
- Related terms
- gradualism, saltationism