Throughout the history of evolutionary biology, as well as many other sciences, there has been a conflict between two styles of thinking. One is conventionally called functionalism, although in evolutionary biology the term “adaptationism” is more frequently used today because a trait’s “functional fit for it’s office” is produced through adaptation by natural selection (i.e., function is explained by adaptation through natural selection). The functionalist stance is one that explains organismal traits through their functional and adaptive values.

The alternative style of thinking does not have a generic name in biology, although in other areas of study it is called “structuralist.”

Michael Denton in Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis or Gunter P. Wagner in The Intellectual Challenge of Morphological Evolution: A Case for Variational Structuralism?

Taking homology seriously inevitably leads one to a mode of thinking that was out of favor during most of the twentieth century…typology naturally emerged from the facts of evolutionary developmental biology and it would be seriously problematic to try to avoid it.

– Gunter P. Wagner

Is structuralism even remotely reasonable?

Is Denton a quack not because of what he believes, but because of who published his latest book?

Is Wagner a creationist because he claims that typology naturally emerges from the facts of evolutionary biology when everyone knows typology comes straight from the Bible?

What do the “skeptics” say?