An earlier article described the mid-twentieth century origins of the method of “paradigms” in paleobiology, as a way of making testable hypotheses about the functional morphology of extinct organisms. The present article describes the use of “paradigms” through the 1970s and, briefly, to the end of the century. After I had proposed the paradigm method to help interpret the ecological history of brachiopods, my students developed it in relation to that and other invertebrate phyla, notably in Euan Clarkson’s analysis of vision in trilobites. David Raup’s computer-aided “theoretical morphology” was then combined with my functional or adaptive emphasis, in Adolf Seilacher’s tripartite “constructional morphology.” Stephen Jay Gould, who had strongly endorsed the method, later switched to criticizing the “adaptationist program” he claimed it embodied. Although the explicit use of paradigms in paleobiology had declined by the end of the century, the method was tacitly subsumed into functional morphology as “biomechanics.”

中文翻译：

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古生物学“范式”方法的命运

较早的一篇文章描述了 20 世纪中叶古生物学“范式”方法的起源，作为对已灭绝生物的功能形态做出可检验假设的一种方式。本文描述了从 1970 年代到本世纪末的“范式”的使用情况。在我提出范式方法来帮助解释腕足动物的生态历史后，我的学生将它与该门和其他无脊椎动物门相关联，特别是在 Euan Clarkson 对三叶虫视觉的分析中。David Raup 的计算机辅助“理论形态学”然后与我的功能或适应性重点相结合，在 Adolf Seilacher 的三方“构造形态学”中。强烈支持这种方法的斯蒂芬杰伊古尔德后来转而批评他声称它体现的“适应主义计划”。