7 - The Devil is in the Gestalt

Summary

Theorists are exasperated to be told what they have ‘always known’. Yet there is a difference between knowing in a parenthetical, ‘of course it's important’ way about the intimacy and reciprocality of organism-environmental exchanges in development and evolution, say, and incorporating the knowledge in models and explanations, research and theory.

– Susan Oyama (2000a)

How we understand both heredity and evolution depends crucially on how we understand development. Accordingly, theories of evolution and of development are critically interdependent. Those endorsing an evolutionary theory ignorant of development – or an account of development ignorant of evolution – have enjoyed centre stage for most of the past century. An insurrection is long overdue.

Although evolutionary developmental biology, in its various formulations, represents a most promising synthesis of development and evolution, there are alternative proposals currently in circulation. In this final chapter, I explore one such alternative in detail – the developmental systems perspective. I highlight its benefits and limitations as compared with evolutionary developmental biology as a theoretical, empirical, and methodological framework for a genuinely synthetic biology comprising genetics, developmental biology, and evolution. But first, I explore how the modern consensus might mislead us in the project of synthesising biology.

STANDARD VIEWS

A rough taxonomy of some standard positions on the relationship amongst genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology will set the stage for the discussion in this chapter.