Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism

In roughly ten pages, Eldredge and Gould proposed that the fossil record means what it shows: long periods of stasis interrupted by rapid bursts of speciation, not the smooth gradual change Darwin assumed and palaeontologists had been explaining away as gaps in the record. The paper split evolutionary biology into two camps for decades. Its influence extends well beyond biology -- Carlota Perez's model of technological revolutions, with long installation periods punctuated by turning points, echoes the same structural pattern. The argument that stability is the norm and change is episodic, concentrated, and often triggered by external disruption remains one of the most productive ideas in evolutionary thinking.