Overview Pot theorists, typically, tend to be lacking credentials in the hard physical sciences. Example melting pot theorists, include: Ludwig Bertalanffy, and his 1968 general systems theory; Erich Jantsch, and the general argument found in his 1980 Self-Organizing Universe, Peter Corning, and his 1981 synergy-based evolution theory; Daniel Brooks and Edward Wiley, and their 1982 Brooks-Wiley theory; among others. [1] The following cartoon, e.g., is a parody of the infamous 1982 Brooks-Wiley theory, from the article “Are Evolutionary Biologists Really Ready for the Extended Synthesis”, by David Tyler, portraying their argument as a "melting pot theory" wherein, in the end, Canadian zoologist Daniel Brooks is the one who gets "burned".
In fact commenting, in 2011 retrospect, on the adverse reaction to their theory: “Ed and I were stunned by [the] vicious tone. Why the rhetorical heat?” [2]
Of note, melting pot theorists, as the decades progress, as pattern seems to indicate, seem to build on each other, e.g. Corning, himself a pot theorist, cites Bertalanffy, a classical pot theorist; and so it is with newer pot theorist.
