Instructive selection and immunological theory.

The turning point of modern immunological theory was the advent of the clonal selection theory (Burnet, Talmage - 1957). A useful heuristic in the classification of theoretical models was the contrast of 'instructive' with 'selective' models of the acquisition of information by biological systems. The neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1940s had consolidated biologists' model of evolution based on prior random variation and natural selection, viz.