Recognizing that the adaptationist program played a secondary role in the beginnings of evolutionary Biology, I examine the proper relationship between the adaptationist problematic and the theory of natural selection. Then, I offer reflections on how the profiles of the adaptationist program were delineated, and attempt to identify the reasons why it only became consolidated in the twenty century much later than the phylogenetic program that, based on the idea of common descent and not on the acceptance of the idea of natural selection, effectively guided the first evolutionary studies.
Darwin; Semper; Wallace; Adaptationism; Adaptationist program