   The debate over adaptationism is often traced back to a 1979 paper by Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, called “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” or simply the “Spandrels” paper. This paper is important but, in fact, this debate traces back to the nineteenth century, with elements of adaptationism or pluralism as currently understood being present in the work of Henry Bates, William Bateson, Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Wallace, and August Weissman, among others (see Mayr 1982 and Ruse 2003 for some of the historical background).