The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited

The Major Transitions in Evolution is part of an important tradition in evolutionary biology which attempts to identify large-scale patterns in life's history, and to relate those patterns to evolutionary mechanisms that can be studied empirically. here we sketch some of this history and give our take on the importance of these projects. We also lay out the ways in which Maynard Smith's and Szathmary's formulation contrasts with its predecessors, and explain the significance of those contrasts.