Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution

✍ Scribed by Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, Russell D. Gray

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 392
• Series: Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology
• Edition: 1st
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The nature/nurture debate is not dead. Dichotomous views of development still underlie many fundamental debates in the biological and social sciences. Developmental systems theory (DST) offers a new conceptual framework with which to resolve such debates. DST views ontogeny as contingent cycles of interaction among a varied set of developmental resources, no one of which controls the process. These factors include DNA, cellular and organismic structure, and social and ecological interactions. DST has excited interest from a wide range of researchers, from molecular biologists to anthropologists, because of its ability to integrate evolutionary theory and other disciplines without falling into traditional oppositions. The book provides historical background to DST, recent theoretical findings on the mechanisms of heredity, applications of the DST framework to behavioral development, implications of DST for the philosophy of biology, and critical reactions to DST.

✦ Table of Contents

Preface......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Contributors......Page 12
1 Introduction: What Is Developmental Systems Theory?......Page 16
I INFLUENCES......Page 28
2 Toward a Systems View of Development: An Appraisal of Lehrman’s Critique of Lorenz......Page 30
3 A Critique of Konrad Lorenz’s Theory of Instinctive Behavior......Page 40
4 A Developmental Psychobiological Systems View: Early Formulation and Current Status......Page 56
5 Gene, Organism and Environment: A New Introduction......Page 70
6 Gene, Organism and Environment......Page 74
II RETHINKING HEREDITY......Page 82
7 Let’s Talk about Genes: The Process Molecular Gene Concept and Its Context......Page 84
8 Deconstructing the Gene and Reconstructing Molecular Developmental Systems......Page 100
9 The Systems of Inheritance......Page 114
10 Niche Construction, Ecological Inheritance, and Cycles of Contingency in Evolution......Page 132
III THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHENOTYPES AND BEHAVIOR......Page 142
11 The Ontogeny of Phenotypes......Page 144
12 The Development of Ant Colony Behavior......Page 156
13 Behavioral Development and Darwinian Evolution......Page 164
14 Parental Care and Development......Page 182
IV RETHINKING DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION......Page 190
15 Terms in Tension: What Do You Do When All the Good Words Are Taken?......Page 192
16 Darwinism and Developmental Systems......Page 210
17 Generative Entrenchment and the Developmental Systems Approach to Evolutionary Processes......Page 234
18 Developmental Systems, Darwinian Evolution, and the Unity of Science......Page 254
19 From Complementarity to Obviation: On Dissolving the Boundaries between Social and Biological Anthropology, Archaeology, and Psychology......Page 270
V RESPONSES TO DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS THEORY......Page 296
20 On the Status and Explanatory Structure of Developmental Systems Theory......Page 298
21 Beyond the Gene but Beneath the Skin......Page 314
22 Distributed Agency within Intersecting Ecological, Social, and Scientific Processes......Page 328
23 Niche Construction, Developmental Systems, and the Extended Replicator......Page 348
24 Developmental Systems Theory and Ethics: Different Ways to Be Normative with Regard to Science......Page 366
Index......Page 378