Abstract
Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offers both an account of developmental process and also new integrative frameworks for analyzing interactions between development and evolution. Biologists and philosophers are keen on evo-devo in part because it appears to offer a comfort zone between, on the one hand, what some take to be the relative inability of mainstream evolutionary biology to integrate a developmental perspective; and, on the other hand, what some take to be more intractable syntheses of development and evolution. In this article, I outline core concerns of evo-devo, distinguish theoretical and practical variants, and counter Sterelny's recent argument that evo-devo's attention to development, while important, offers no significant, challenge to evolutionary theory as we know it.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 591-611 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Biology and Philosophy |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2002 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Development
- Epigenetics
- Evolution
- Neo-Darwinism
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy
- General Agricultural and Biological Sciences
- History and Philosophy of Science