Abstract

Evolutionary developmental biology is often said to have undertaken the missing synthesis between two great historical traditions: evolutionary morphology and developmental genetics. Nevertheless, Pere Alberch's conception of development as a dynamical system and the subsequent view of evolution as the result of changes in developmental parameters does not fit in any of the aforementioned historical approaches. Of course, he was not alone, nor his reflections came from nothing. This third way, halfway between the morphological and the genetic approach, was explored by a few biologists conforming what I will call the "morphogenetic school". In my talk, and departing from Alberch's work, I will analyze the historical roots of this approach to ontogeny and phylogeny and the role it played in the origins of EvoDevo