Philosophy of Biology > Developmental Biology > Developmental Systems Theory

Developmental Systems Theory

Edited by Michal Arciszewski
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Specific to papers included in Developmental Systems Theory (DST) is the belief that the study of development requires a systems-level model. Such a model would abstract away from the specific biological details of any particular developmental process in order to isolate the general properties of developing systems.  Contrasting with Developmental Modularity, DST maintains that identifying the function of individual developmental modules at the cellular and molecular levels is intractably complicated and is incapable of representing the structure found at the abstract systems-level, systems properties are emergent. However, reflecting an internal dispute, the systems studied are either individual developing organisms (expressing particular phenotypes) or systems of ecologically-coupled populations of developing organisms (as they co-evolve with each other).

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140 found
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  1. Extended Cognition, Extended Selection, and Developmental Systems Theory.Robert D. Rupert - manuscript
    I respond to Karola Stotz's criticisms of my previously published challenges to the inference from developmental systems theory to an extended view of cognition.
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  2. Causal Specificity, Biological Possibility and Non-Parity About Genetic Causes.Marcel Weber - manuscript
    Several authors have used the notion of causal specificity in order to defend non-parity about genetic causes (Waters 2007, Woodward 2010, Weber 2017, forthcoming). Non-parity in this context is the idea that DNA and some other biomolecules that are often described as information-bearers by biologists play a unique role in life processes, an idea that has been challenged by Developmental Systems Theory (e.g., Oyama 2000). Indeed, it has proven to be quite difficult to state clearly what the alleged special role (...)
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  3. Is Nativism in Psychology Reconcilable with the Parity Thesis in Biology?Slobodan Perovic & Ljiljana Radenovic - 2008
    The Modern Synthesis of Darwinism and genetics regards non-genetic factors as merely constraints on the genetic variations that result in the characteristics of organisms. Even though the environment (including social interactions and culture) is as necessary as genes in terms of selection and inheritance, it does not contain the information that controls the development of the traits. S. Oyama’s account of the Parity Thesis, however, states that one cannot conceivably distinguish in a meaningful way between nature-based (i.e., gene-based) and nurture-based (...)
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  4. Causal Selection Versus Causal Parity in Biology: Relevant Counterfactuals and Biologically Normal Interventions.Marcel Weber - forthcoming - In C. Kenneth Waters & James Woodward (eds.), Philosophical Perspectives on Causal Reasoning in Biology. Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science. Vol. XXI. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
    Causal selection is the task of picking out, from a field of known causally relevant factors, some factors as elements of an explanation. The Causal Parity Thesis in the philosophy of biology challenges the usual ways of making such selections among different causes operating in a developing organism. The main target of this thesis is usually gene centrism, the doctrine that genes play some special role in ontogeny, which is often described in terms of information-bearing or programming. This paper is (...)
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  5. Development and Microbiology.Aja Watkins - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (4):1-30.
    On the basis of findings from developmental biology, some researchers have argued that evolutionary theory needs to be significantly updated. Advocates of such a “developmental update” have, among other things, suggested that we need to re-conceptualize units of selection, that we should expand our view of inheritance to include environmental as well as genetic and epigenetic factors, that we should think of organisms and their environment as involved in reciprocal causation, and that we should reevaluate the rates of evolutionary change. (...)
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  6. Essence in the Age of Evolution: A New Theory of Natural Kinds.Christopher J. Austin - 2018 - London, UK: Routledge.
    This book offers a novel defence of a highly contested philosophical position: biological natural kind essentialism. This theory is routinely and explicitly rejected for its purported inability to be explicated in the context of contemporary biological science, and its supposed incompatibility with the process and progress of evolution by natural selection. Christopher J. Austin challenges these objections, and in conjunction with contemporary scientific advancements within the field of evolutionary-developmental biology, the book utilises a contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of "dispositional properties", or (...)
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  7. Developmental Systems Theory as a Process Theory.Paul Edmund Griffiths & Karola Stotz - 2018 - In Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupre (eds.), Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 225-245.
    Griffiths and Russell D. Gray (1994, 1997, 2001) have argued that the fundamental unit of analysis in developmental systems theory should be a process – the life cycle – and not a set of developmental resources and interactions between those resources. The key concepts of developmental systems theory, epigenesis and developmental dynamics, both also suggest a process view of the units of development. This chapter explores in more depth the features of developmental systems theory that favour treating processes as fundamental (...)
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  8. A Developmental Systems Account of Human Nature.Karola Stotz & Paul Edmund Griffiths - 2018 - In Tim Lewens & Elizabeth Hannon (eds.), Why we disagree about human nature. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 00-00.
    It is now widely accepted that a scientifically credible conception of human nature must reject the folkbiological idea of a fixed, inner essence that makes us human. We argue here that to understand human nature is to understand the plastic process of human development and the diversity it produces. Drawing on the framework of developmental systems theory and the idea of developmental niche construction we argue that human nature is not embodied in only one input to development, such as the (...)
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  9. Which Kind of Causal Specificity Matters Biologically?Marcel Weber - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (3):574-585.
    Griffiths et al. (2015) have proposed a quantitative measure of causal specificity and used it to assess various attempts to single out genetic causes as being causally more specific than other cellular mechanisms, for example, alternative splicing. Focusing in particular on developmental processes, they have identified a number of important challenges for this project. In this discussion note, I would like to show how these challenges can be met.
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  10. The Dispositional Genome: Primus Inter Pares.Christopher J. Austin - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (2):227-246.
    According to the proponents of Developmental Systems Theory and the Causal Parity Thesis, the privileging of the genome as “first among equals” with respect to the development of phenotypic traits is more a reflection of our own heuristic prejudice than of ontology - the underlying causal structures responsible for that specified development no more single out the genome as primary than they do other broadly “environmental” factors. Parting with the methodology of the popular responses to the Thesis, this paper offers (...)
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  11. Ontological Issues in the Life Sciences: Third European Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Klosterneuburg, Austria, 1–5 September 2014.James DiFrisco, Gaëlle Pontarotti, Federico Boem, Guillaume Schlaepfer, Ewelina Sokolowska & Eva Fernández-Labandera - 2015 - Biological Theory 10 (2):176-181.
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  12. Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond.L. R. Franklin-Hall - 2015 - In P.-A. Braillard & C. Malaterre (eds.), Explanation in Biology: An Enquiry into the Diversity of Explanatory Patterns in the Life Sciences. Springer. pp. 413-438.
    Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes — and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this ‘causal selection problem’ in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled (...)
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  13. Developmental Systems Theory.Paul Griffiths & Adam Hochman - 2015 - eLS:1-7.
    Developmental systems theory (DST) is a wholeheartedly epigenetic approach to development, inheritance and evolution. The developmental system of an organism is the entire matrix of resources that are needed to reproduce the life cycle. The range of developmental resources that are properly described as being inherited, and which are subject to natural selection, is far wider than has traditionally been allowed. Evolution acts on this extended set of developmental resources. From a developmental systems perspective, development does not proceed according to (...)
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  14. Контуры нового мирового порядка.Leonid Grinin - 2015 - Философия И Общество 3 (4):7-33.
    Мировой порядок как система определенных идей и правил, господ-ствующих в международной политике, стал формироваться в Европе начиная с XVI в., окончательно утвердившись в XIX столетии. Однако этот порядок держится обычно в пределах трех-четырех десятилетий, а затем под влиянием изменившихся обстоятельств и нового баланса сил меняется. В настоящее время мы как раз переживаем период смены ми-рового порядка и начала формирования новой его системы. В статье анализируется начало ослабления мирового порядка, основанного на американской гегемонии, рассматриваются характерные черты и методы, которые используют США (...)
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  15. The Comet Cometh: Evolving Developmental Systems.Johannes Jaeger, Manfred Laubichler & Werner Callebaut - 2015 - Biological Theory 10 (1):36-49.
    In a recent opinion piece, Denis Duboule has claimed that the increasing shift towards systems biology is driving evolutionary and developmental biology apart, and that a true reunification of these two disciplines within the framework of evolutionary developmental biology may easily take another 100 years. He identifies methodological, epistemological, and social differences as causes for this supposed separation. Our article provides a contrasting view. We argue that Duboule’s prediction is based on a one-sided understanding of systems biology as a science (...)
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  16. Programming the Emergence in Morphogenetically Architected Complex Systems.Franck Varenne, Pierre Chaigneau, Jean Petitot & René Doursat - 2015 - Acta Biotheoretica 63 (3):295-308.
    Large sets of elements interacting locally and producing specific architectures reliably form a category that transcends the usual dividing line between biological and engineered systems. We propose to call them morphogenetically architected complex systems (MACS). While taking the emergence of properties seriously, the notion of MACS enables at the same time the design (or “meta-design”) of operational means that allow controlling and even, paradoxically, programming this emergence. To demonstrate our claim, we first show that among all the self-organized systems studied (...)
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  17. Engineering and Evolvability.Brett Calcott - 2014 - Biology and Philosophy 29 (3):293-313.
    Comparing engineering to evolution typically involves adaptationist thinking, where well-designed artifacts are likened to well-adapted organisms, and the process of evolution is likened to the process of design. A quite different comparison is made when biologists focus on evolvability instead of adaptationism. Here, the idea is that complex integrated systems, whether evolved or engineered, share universal principles that affect the way they change over time. This shift from adaptationism to evolvability is a significant move for, as I argue, we can (...)
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  18. The Evolution of Epigenetics.Gary Felsenfeld - 2014 - Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 57 (1):132-148.
    Since the early days of embryology, a central puzzle for biologists has been how a fertilized egg can execute a clearly defined and reproducible program that leads ultimately to a complex organism. It was clear that all of the information necessary to create the adult must already reside in the zygote, but how that information was translated into a complex organism was obscure. Even as recently as the late 1940s, the molecular mechanisms associated with early development were unknown and, in (...)
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  19. Why How and Why Aren’T Enough: More Problems with Mayr’s Proximate-Ultimate Distinction.Brett Calcott - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):767-780.
    Like Laland et al., I think Mayr’s distinction is problematic, but I identify a further problem with it. I argue that Mayr’s distinction is a false dichotomy, and obscures an important question about evolutionary change. I show how this question, once revealed, sheds light on some debates in evo-devo that Laland et al.’s analysis cannot, and suggest that it provides a different view about how future integration between biological disciplines might proceed.
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  20. Developmental Systems Theory: What Does It Explain, and How Does It Explain It?Paul E. Griffiths & James G. Tabery - 2013 - In Richard M. Lerner & Janette B. Benson (eds.), Embodiment and Epigenesis: Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Understanding the Role of Biology Within the Relational Developmental System Part A: Philosophical, Theoretical, and Biological Dimensions. Elsevier. pp. 65--94.
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  21. The Phylogeny Fallacy and the Ontogeny Fallacy.Adam Hochman - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (4):593-612.
    In 1990 Robert Lickliter and Thomas Berry identified the phylogeny fallacy, an empirically untenable dichotomy between proximate and evolutionary causation, which locates proximate causes in the decoding of ‘ genetic programs’, and evolutionary causes in the historical events that shaped these programs. More recently, Lickliter and Hunter Honeycutt argued that Evolutionary Psychologists commit this fallacy, and they proposed an alternative research program for evolutionary psychology. For these authors the phylogeny fallacy is the proximate/evolutionary distinction itself, which they argue constitutes a (...)
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  22. More on How and Why: Cause and Effect in Biology Revisited.Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, William Hoppitt & Tobias Uller - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):719-745.
    In 1961, Ernst Mayr published a highly influential article on the nature of causation in biology, in which he distinguished between proximate and ultimate causes. Mayr argued that proximate causes (e.g. physiological factors) and ultimate causes (e.g. natural selection) addressed distinct ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions and were not competing alternatives. That distinction retains explanatory value today. However, the adoption of Mayr’s heuristic led to the widespread belief that ontogenetic processes are irrelevant to evolutionary questions, a belief that has (1) hindered (...)
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  23. From Arabidopsis and Antirrhinum to Arabia and Antioch. [REVIEW]A. C. Love - 2013 - Evolution & Development 15:158-159.
    From Arabidopsis and Antirrhinum to Arabia and Antioch: a review of cells to civilizations: the principles of change that shape life -/- Cells to Civilizations: The Principles of Change That Shape Life, Coen, E. 2012. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 312 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14967-7.
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  24. Overextension: The Extended Mind and Arguments From Evolutionary Biology. [REVIEW]Armin W. Schulz - 2013 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 3 (2):241-255.
    I critically assess two widely cited evolutionary biological arguments for two versions of the ‘Extended Mind Thesis’ (EMT): namely, an argument appealing to Dawkins’s ‘Extended Phenotype Thesis’ (EPT) and an argument appealing to ‘Developmental Systems Theory’ (DST). Specifically, I argue that, firstly, appealing to the EPT is not useful for supporting the EMT (in either version), as it is structured and motivated too differently from the latter to be able to corroborate or elucidate it. Secondly, I extend and defend Rupert’s (...)
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  25. Evolutionary Systems Biology: What It is and Why It Matters.Orkun S. Soyer & Maureen A. O'Malley - 2013 - Bioessays 35 (8):696-705.
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  26. Mechanism, Emergence, and Miscibility: The Autonomy of Evo-Devo.Denis M. Walsh - 2013 - In Philippe Huneman (ed.), Functions: Selection and Mechanisms. Springer. pp. 43--65.
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  27. Investigating Metalloproteinases MMP-2 and MMP-9 Mechanosensitivity to Feedback Loops Involved in the Regulation of In Vitro Angiogenesis by Endogenous Mechanical Stresses. [REVIEW]Minh-Uyen Dao Thi, Candice Trocmé, Marie-Paule Montmasson, Eric Fanchon, Bertrand Toussaint & Philippe Tracqui - 2012 - Acta Biotheoretica 60 (1-2):21-40.
    Angiogenesis is a complex morphogenetic process regulated by growth factors, but also by the force balance between endothelial cells traction stresses and extracellular matrix viscoelastic resistance. Studies conducted with in vitro angiogenesis assays demonstrated that decreasing ECM stiffness triggers an angiogenic switch that promotes organization of EC into tubular cords or pseudo-capillaries. Thus, mechano-sensitivity of EC with regard to proteases secretion, and notably matrix metalloproteinases , should likely play a pivotal role in this switching mechanism. While most studies analysing strain (...)
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  28. Grammar as a Developmental Phenomenon.Guy Dove - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (5):615-637.
    More and more researchers are examining grammar acquisition from theoretical perspectives that treat it as an emergent phenomenon. In this essay, I argue that a robustly developmental perspective provides a potential explanation for some of the well-known crosslinguistic features of early child language: the process of acquisition is shaped in part by the developmental constraints embodied in von Baer’s law of development. An established model of development, the Developmental Lock, captures and elucidates the probabilistic generalizations at the heart of von (...)
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  29. The Hydra Model - a Model for What?Alfred Gierer - 2012 - International Journal of Developmental Biology 56:437-445.
    The introductory personal remarks refer to my motivations for choosing research projects, and for moving from physics to molecular biology and then to development, with Hydra as a model system. Historically, Trembley’s discovery of Hydra regeneration in 1744 was the begin¬ning of developmental biology as we understand it, with passionate debates about preformation versus de novo generation, mechanisms versus organisms. In fact, seemingly conflicting bottom-up and top-down concepts are both required in combination to understand development. In modern terms, this means (...)
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  30. Genetic Representation Explains the Cluster of Innateness‐Related Properties.Nicholas Shea - 2012 - Mind and Language 27 (4):466-493.
    The concept of innateness is used to make inferences between various better-understood properties, like developmental canalization, evolutionary adaptation, heritability, species-typicality, and so on (‘innateness-related properties’). This article uses a recently-developed account of the representational content carried by inheritance systems like the genome to explain why innateness-related properties cluster together, especially in non-human organisms. Although inferences between innateness-related properties are deductively invalid, and lead to false conclusions in many actual cases, where some aspect of a phenotypic trait develops in reliance on (...)
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  31. Varieties of Parity.Ulrich E. Stegmann - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (6):903-918.
    A central idea of developmental systems theory is ‘parity’ or ‘symmetry’ between genes and non-genetic factors of development. The precise content of this idea remains controversial, with different authors stressing different aspects and little explicit comparisons among the various interpretations. Here I characterise and assess several influential versions of parity.
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  32. Konzepte und Konstruktionen des Lebenden: philosophische und biologische Aspekte einer künstlichen Herstellung von Mikroorganismen.Elke Witt - 2012 - Alber.
    Im Zuge der Entwicklung der Synthetischen Biologie lassen sich zur Zeit in den modernen Lebenswissenschaften Bemühungen erkennen, Leben künstlich herzustellen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit den erkenntnistheoretischen Aspekten der Versuche einer technischen Erzeugung von minimalen Lebensformen. Sie untersucht, auf welchen unterschiedlichen Grundannahmen die aktuellen Projekte zur Herstellung von Proto- und Minimalorganismen beruhen bzw. welche Eigenschaften von Organismen als konstitutiv für die Lebensprozesse angenommen werden.
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  33. Cognitive Biology: Dealing with Information From Bacteria to Minds.Gennaro Auletta - 2011 - Oxford University Press, Usa.
    Machine generated contents note: -- 1. Quantum Mechanics as a General Framework -- 2. Classical and Quantum Information and Entropy -- 3. The Brain: An Outlook -- 4. Vision -- 5. Dealing with Target's Motion and Our Own Movement -- 6. Complexity: A Necessary Condition -- 7. General Features of Life -- 8. The Organism as a Semiotic and Cybernetic System -- 9. Phylogeny -- 10. Ontogeny -- 11. Epigeny -- 12. Representational Semiotics -- 13. The Brain as an Information-Control (...)
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  34. Processes of Life: Essays in the Philosophy of Biology.John Dupré - 2011 - Oxford University Press.
    John Dupr explores recent revolutionary developments in biology and considers their relevance for our understanding of human nature and society. He reveals how the advance of genetic science is changing our view of the constituents of life, and shows how an understanding of microbiology will overturn standard assumptions about the living world.
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  35. Expanding the Temporal Dimensions of Developmental Biology: The Role of Environmental Agents in Establishing Adult-Onset Phenotypes.Scott F. Gilbert - 2011 - Biological Theory 6 (1):65-72.
    Developmental biology is expanding into several new areas. One new area of study concerns the production of adult-onset phenotypes by exposure of the fetus or neonate to environmental agents. These agents include maternal nutrients, developmental modulators, and maternal care. In all three cases, a major mechanism for the generation of the altered phenotype is chromatin modification. Nutrient conditions, developmental modulators, and even maternal care appear to alter DNA methylation and other associated changes in chromatin that regulate gene expression. This brings (...)
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  36. Our Plastic Nature.Paul E. Griffiths - 2011 - In Snait Gissis & Eva Jablonka (eds.), Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology. MIT Press. pp. 319--330.
    This chapter analyzes the notion of human nature and the concept of inner nature from the perspective of developmental systems theory. It explores the folkbiology of human nature and looks at three features associated with traits that are expressions of the inner nature that organisms inherit from their parents: fixity, typicality, teleology.
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  37. Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim About Inherited Representations.Nicholas Shea - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (1):60-82.
    Developmental Systems Theory (DST) emphasises the importance of non-genetic factors in development and their relevance to evolution. A common, deflationary reaction is that it has long been appreciated that non-genetic factors are causally indispensable. This paper argues that DST can be reformulated to make a more substantive claim: that the special role played by genes is also played by some (but not all) non-genetic resources. That special role is to transmit inherited representations, in the sense of Shea (2007: Biology and (...)
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  38. Extending and Expanding the Darwinian Synthesis: The Role of Complex Systems Dynamics.Bruce H. Weber - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1):75-81.
    Darwinism is defined here as an evolving research tradition based upon the concepts of natural selection acting upon heritable variation articulated via background assumptions about systems dynamics. Darwin’s theory of evolution was developed within a context of the background assumptions of Newtonian systems dynamics. The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, or neo-Darwinism, successfully joined Darwinian selection and Mendelian genetics by developing population genetics informed by background assumptions of Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Currently the Darwinian Research Tradition is changing as it incorporates new information (...)
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  39. The Role of Self-Organization in Developmental Systems Theory and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution.Anouk Barberousse - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):202-205.
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  40. The Role of Self-Organization in Developmental Systems Theory and the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution.Anouk Barberousse - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):202-205.
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  41. Introduction: Reassessing Developmental Systems Theory.Anouk Barberousse, Francesca Merlin & Thomas Pradeu - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):199-201.
    The Developmental Systems Theory (DST) presented by its proponents as a challenging approach in biology is aimed at transforming the workings of the life sciences from both a theoretical and experimental point of view (see, in particular, Oyama [1985] 2000; Oyama et al. 2001). Even though some may have the impression that the enthusiasm surrounding DST has faded in very recent years, some of the key concepts, ideas, and visions of DST have in fact pervaded biology and philosophy of biology. (...)
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  42. A Systems Biology View of Evolutionary Genetics.Jonathan Bard - 2010 - Bioessays 32 (7):559-563.
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  43. Systems Biology and the Mechanistic Framework.Pierre-Alain Braillard - 2010 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32 (1).
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  44. Developmental Systems Theory.John Dupré - 2010 - The Philosophers' Magazine (50):38-39.
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  45. The Dynamics of Emergent Self-Organisation: Reconceptualising Child Development in Teacher Education.Minkang Kim & Derek Sankey - 2010 - Journal of Teacher Education 35 (4):79-98.
    For more than half a century, child development has endured as one of the main components of teacher education. But if children do develop, as developmentalists claim, what precisely is it that develops and how? Traditionally, within education, answers to these questions have drawn heavily on the theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Piaget advocated the progressive development of reasoning through identifiable linear phases or stages. Vygotsky emphasised the role of cultural mediation, whereby the child internalises the habits of (...)
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  46. Genes Versus Genomes: The Role of Genome Organization in Evolution.Ehud Lamm - 2010 - Dissertation, Tel Aviv University
    Recent and not so recent advances in our molecular understanding of the genome make the once prevalent view of the genome as a passive container of genetic information (i.e., genes) untenable, and emphasize the importance of the internal organization and re-organization dynamics of the genome for both development and evolution. While this conclusion is by now well accepted, the construction of a comprehensive conceptual framework for studying the genome as a dynamic system, capable of self-organization and adaptive behavior is still (...)
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  47. On Griffiths and Gray’s Concept of Expanded and Diffused Inheritance.Francesca Merlin - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):206-215.
    Developmental System Theory is a theoretical reinterpretation of biological phenomena challenging the conventional gene-centered account of development and evolution. In this paper, I focus on Griffiths and Gray’s version of Developmental Systems Theory and I particularly analyze their reconceptualization of inheritance. First, I present their concept of expanded and diffused inheritance; then, I examine and criticize their refusal of the multiple inheritance system model; finally, I present and contrast Griffiths and Gray’s extension of what they call the “causal parity thesis” (...)
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  48. Genotype–Phenotype Mapping and the End of the ‘Genes as Blueprint’ Metaphor.Massimo Pigliucci - 2010 - Philosophical Transactions Royal Society B 365:557–566.
    In a now classic paper published in 1991, Alberch introduced the concept of genotype–phenotype (G!P) mapping to provide a framework for a more sophisticated discussion of the integration between genetics and developmental biology that was then available. The advent of evo-devo first and of the genomic era later would seem to have superseded talk of transitions in phenotypic space and the like, central to Alberch’s approach. On the contrary, this paper shows that recent empirical and theoretical advances have only sharpened (...)
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  49. The Organism in Developmental Systems Theory.Thomas Pradeu - 2010 - Biological Theory 5 (3):216-222.
    In this paper, I address the question of what the Developmental Systems Theory (DST) aims at explaining. I distinguish two lines of thought in DST, one which deals specifically with development, and tries to explain the development of the individual organism, and the other which presents itself as a reconceptualization of evolution, and tries to explain the evolution of populations of developmental systems (organism-environment units). I emphasize that, despite the claiming of the contrary by DST proponents, there are two very (...)
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  50. Les Limites du Vivant Sont-Elles Riches D’Une Leçon? Contribution À L’Étude du Déterminisme Morphique.Philippe Gagnon - 2009 - Eikasia. Revista de Filosofía 27:155-186.
    Freedom is first apprehended as the pursuit of an activity which implies the choice to defend a thesis among other possible ones. This translation of the problem of freedom in an articulate language presupposes a complex nervous system and sensory apparatuses which we take for granted. In this study, I try to explore the undergrounds of the problem of freedom along with the suggestion that the notion of coding could enable one to bridge nature and the mind. When organisms invent, (...)
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