punctuationism
English
Etymology
From punctuation + -ism.
Noun
punctuationism (uncountable)
- (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.
- 1986, Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker[1], W. W. Norton & Company, published 2015, →ISBN:
- 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.