adaptationist
- noun
- /ˌædæpˈteɪʃənɪst/
- Specialized
:
adaptacionista
- An adaptationist explains how certain bird traits evolved to help them survive in their environments.
- ardent adaptationists
- adaptationist thinking
- adaptationist programme
Examples
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Many adaptationists are also blind to the often high social costs of adaptation.
Academic text (1997) -
But where appendages such as legs came from in the first place, and how and why a lineage evolved that first appendage from an appendage-less ancestor, is typically beyond what an adaptationist's perspective can address.
Academic text (2005) -
All three of these alternatives to the adaptationist program seem to me fundamentally misconceived.
Academic text (2002) -
The first stirrings of adaptationist thinking among literary scholars began in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Academic text (2002) -
Adaptationist thinking is grounded in Darwinian conceptions of human nature.
Academic text (2002) -
This is partly a deep conflict between science programs of adaptationists versus drifters.
Blog text (18) -
If the charge of ardent adaptationism is part of a scientific debate, it should only be made when an ardent adaptationist argument is actually presented.
Academic text (2003) -
In the Panglossian world of the adaptationists, Gould and Lewontin suggest that every feature of every organism (in this best of all possible worlds) has been ideally adapted by natural selection.
Academic text (1998) -
More recent work has concentrated on the constructive side of the adaptationist project—assessing theoretical problems within the adaptationist framework and engaging in specific tasks of scholarship and interpretive criticism.
Academic text (2002) -
The cognitive rhetoricians tend to seek common ground with the discourse theory of poststructuralism, and they are uncomfortable with adaptationist claims that human nature consists of a highly structured set of motivational and cognitive dispositions that have evolved through an adaptive process.
Academic text (2002)
Synonyms
14
5.3
A person who believes that living things change over a long time
7
6.0
A person who believes species change over time by natural selection
Surface Forms
Morphology
adaptationist = adaptation (semi-transparent) = adapt + ation + ist
The morphological formation is regular with '-ist' added to 'adaptation', but the sense 'a person who explains traits as adaptations' is a specialized theoretical role which may not be obvious without disciplinary context.
Etymology
Adaptationist comes from adapt ('to make fit') and the ending -ist ('a person who believes or does something'). As a noun, an adaptationist is a person who explains traits or behaviour as useful 'fits' that helped species survive or have babies.