A few years ago I reflected that genomics has not really “revolutionized” evolutionary biology. In contrast, it arguably has revolutionary the science of medical genetics. The reason I said this is that because the big questions in the field were formulated in the 19th and 20th-centuries.
To a great extent, we’re recapitulating theoretical arguments of Huxley and Wallace (the power of selection), or Fisher and Wright (selection within structured populations). What has changed is that genomics allows for the more granular testing of predictions and models. In other words, evolutionary biology is illuminated by the surfeit of data of the 21st-century, rather than presenting to us startling new models.
The theoretical raw materials are present if you read old books and papers. It’s just that then testing those disputes were exceedingly difficult. Another way to state it is that what we suspected, we can now confirm or reject.
This, to me, explains why theoretical arguments are less vociferous and personal today than they were in the past. The data is there, so the race is to calculate.