Hendrikse, Jesse Love (Author)
University of Calgary (Canada)
Physical Details: 152 pp.
Language: English
The dissertation surveys three prominent views on the relation between evolution and development and on the significance of genes in both the phenomena and the study of evolution and development. I review three standard justifications for the centrality of genes and look at contemporary counters to those claims. The dissertation then turns to an intensive fleshing out of developmental systems theory (DST). DST is offered by its advocates as a replacement for genocentric accounts of evolution and development. A common criticism of DST is that it invokes a holistic picture of biological causation. I argue that DST need not invoke holism to deliver its distinctive picture of biology. Further, related, criticisms of DST are also considered. One such is the criticism that DST cannot distinguish which causal factors are the salient ones for understanding development and evolution. I argue that, contrary to appearances, DST does offer a criterion of salience that is at least as robust and plausible as those of its competitors. Another criticism is that DST is committed to an impoverished monistic view of science. This charge is also dispelled. DST is a notoriously difficult view to pin down. What emerges from my defence of DST is a reconstruction that makes its commitments explicit. Moreover, I argue that DST and its rivals are engaged in a debate about how best to explain biological phenomena. Consequently, the debate about how to understand evolution and development turns in part on conceptions of scientific explanation. On the flip side, the debate is seen to be a fruitful case-study for assessing competing conceptions of scientific explanation.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/04 (2006): 1369. UMI pub. no. NR13608.
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