Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution PDF Author: Jason Scott Robert
Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521824675
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. In Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution (evo-devo), an area of resurgent biological interest.Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology.

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution PDF Author: Jason Scott Robert
Publisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521824675
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description
Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. In Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution (evo-devo), an area of resurgent biological interest.Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology.

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution

Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution PDF Author: Jason Scott Robert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139449958
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution (evo-devo), an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology.

The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought

The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought PDF Author: Ron Amundson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139443425
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the contrasts that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology.

Keywords and Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology

Keywords and Concepts in Evolutionary Developmental Biology PDF Author: Brian K. Hall
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674022409
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Covering more than 50 central terms and concepts in entries written by leading experts, this book offers an overview of this new subdiscipline of biology, providing the core insights and ideas that show how embryonic development relates to life-history evolution, adaptation, and responses to and integration with environmental factors.

Form and Function in Developmental Evolution

Form and Function in Developmental Evolution PDF Author: Manfred D. Laubichler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521872685
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Raises questions about the future shape of Evolutionary Developmental biology as it matures as a field.

The Meaning of Evolution

The Meaning of Evolution PDF Author: Robert J. Richards
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226712052
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Did Darwin see evolution as progressive, directed toward producing ever more advanced forms of life? Most contemporary scholars say no. In this challenge to prevailing views, Robert J. Richards says yes—and argues that current perspectives on Darwin and his theory are both ideologically motivated and scientifically unsound. This provocative new reading of Darwin goes directly to the origins of evolutionary theory. Unlike most contemporary biologists or historians and philosophers of science, Richards holds that Darwin did concern himself with the idea of progress, or telos, as he constructed his theory. Richards maintains that Darwin drew on the traditional embryological meanings of the terms "evolution" and "descent with modification." In the 1600s and 1700s, "evolution" referred to the embryological theory of preformation, the idea that the embryo exists as a miniature adult of its own species that simply grows, or evolves, during gestation. By the early 1800s, however, the idea of preformation had become the concept of evolutionary recapitulation, the idea that during its development an embryo passes through a series of stages, each the adult form of an ancestor species. Richards demonstrates that, for Darwin, embryological recapitulation provided a graphic model of how species evolve. If an embryo could be seen as successively taking the structures and forms of its ancestral species, then one could see the evolution of life itself as a succession of species, each transformed from its ancestor. Richards works with the Origin and other published and archival material to show that these embryological models were much on Darwin's mind as he considered the evidence for descent with modification. Why do so many modern researchers find these embryological roots of Darwin's theory so problematic? Richards argues that the current tendency to see evolution as a process that is not progressive and not teleological imposes perspectives on Darwin that incorrectly deny the clearly progressive heart of his embryological models and his evolutionary theory.

From Epigenesis to Epigenetics

From Epigenesis to Epigenetics PDF Author: Linda van Speybroeck
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Today it is acknowledged that the expression of the genome depends on its intracellular, intercellular, organismic and environmental contexts. This text brings together reflections of researchers in molecular and developmental biology and philosophy of science on this field of biological research.

The Triumph of the Embryo

The Triumph of the Embryo PDF Author: Lewis Wolpert
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486469298
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
"This is a clear and engagingly written book," declared Nature, "recommended certainly to nonspecialists, but also to developmental biologists." Its exploration of how single cells multiply and develop offers an accessible look at a difficult subject. Easy-to-understand descriptions of experimental studies offer fascinating insights into aging, cancer, regeneration, and evolution. 1993 edition.

Embryology and the Rise of the Gothic Novel

Embryology and the Rise of the Gothic Novel PDF Author: Diana Pérez Edelman
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030736482
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
This book argues that embryology and the reproductive sciences played a key role in the rise of the Gothic novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Diana Pérez Edelman dissects Horace Walpole’s use of embryological concepts in the development of his Gothic imagination and provides an overview of the conflict between preformation and epigenesis in the scientific community. The book then explores the ways in which Gothic literature can be read as epigenetic in its focus on internally sourced modes of identity, monstrosity, and endless narration. The chapters analyze Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto; Ann Radcliffe’s A Sicilian Romance, The Italian, and The Mysteries of Udolpho; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Charles Robert Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer; and James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, arguing that these touchstones of the Gothic register why the Gothic emerged at that time and why it continues today: the mysteries of reproduction remain unsolved.

Form and Transformation

Form and Transformation PDF Author: Gerry Webster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521354516
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection fails to explain the forms of organisms because it focuses on inheritance and survival, not on how organisms are generated. The first part of this 2007 book (by Gerry Webster) looks critically of the conceptual structure of Darwinism and describes the limitation of the theory of evolution as a comprehensive biological theory, arguing that a theory of biological form is needed to understand the structure of organisms and their transformations as revealed in taxonomy. The second part of the book (by Brian Goodwin) explores such a theory in terms of organisms as developing and transforming dynamic systems, within which gene action is to be understood. A number of specific examples, including tetrapod limb formation and Drosophila development, are used to illustrate how these hierarchically-organized dynamic fields undergo robust symmetry-breaking cascades to produce generic forms.