Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be (...) discovered, and examines the role of models and theories.The two editors have assembled a team of leading contributors who are representative of the scientific and philosophical community within which a diversity of thoughts are growing, and out of which a theory of development may eventually emerge. They analyse a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Evolving Evolutionary Synthesis Population Genetics vs. Developmental Genetics Evo‐Devo's Central Target: The Study of Evolvability Origins? Conclusion Postscript: Counterpoint Acknowledgments References.

No comprehensive theory of development is available yet. Traditionally, we regard the development of animals as a sequence of changes through which an adult multicellular animal is produced, starting from a single cell which is usually a fertilized egg, through increasingly complex stages. However, many phenomena that would not qualify as developmental according to these criteria would nevertheless qualify as developmental in that they imply nontrivial (e.g., non degenerative) changes of form, and/or substantial changes in gene expression. A broad, comparative (...) approach is badly needed. In the Cnidaria, for example, even the boundary between generations is problematic. Describing their life cycle in terms of metagenesis (alternation between polyp generation and medusa generation) or in terms of metamorphosis (polyp as larva or juvenile) are matters of semantics more than biology. The life cycle of other metazoans, described in textbooks in terms of larva-to-adult metamorphosis, is hardly different from a typical metagenetic life cycle of cnidarians. This applies to holometabolous insects and to marine invertebrates like sea urchins, where most of the larval cells are discarded at metamorphosis. The uncertain temporal and spatial boundaries of individual development are also shown by the widespread lack of a strict correspondence between adult and mature. A comprehensive theory of development should start with a zero principle of “developmental inertia,” corresponding to an indeterminate local self-perpetuation of cell-level dynamics. Indeterminate growth, scale-invariance, segmentation, and regeneration provide examples of developmental dynamics close to that. (shrink)

Contrary to the traditional claim that needs for unambiguous communication about animal and plant species are best served by a single set of names ruled by international Codes, I suggest that a more diversified system is required, especially to cope with problems emerging from aggregation of biodiversity data in large databases. Departures from Linnaean nomenclature are sometimes intentional, but there are also other, less obvious but widespread forms of not Code-compliant grey nomenclature. A first problem is due to the circumstance (...) that the Codes are intended to rule over the way names are applied to species and other taxonomic units, whereas users of taxonomy need names to be applied to specimens. For different reasons, it is often impossible to refer a specimen with certainty to a named species, and in those cases an open nomenclature is employed. Second, molecular taxonomy leads to the discovery of clusters of gene sequence diversity not necessarily equivalent to the species recognized and named by taxonomists. Those clusters are mostly indicated with informal names or formulas that challenge comparison between different publications or databases. In several instances, it is not even clear if a formula refers to an individual voucher specimen, or is a provisional species name. The use of non-Linnaean names and formulas must be revised and strengthened by fixing standard formats for the different kinds of objects or hypotheses and providing permanent association of ‘grey names’ with standardized source information such as author and year. In the context of a broad-scope revisitation of aims and scope of scientific nomenclature, it may be worth rethinking if natural objects like plant galls and lichens, although other than the ‘single-entity’ objects traditionally covered by biological classifications, may nevertheless deserve taxonomic names. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology is a rapidly growing discipline whose ambition is to address questions that are of relevance to both evolutionary biology and developmental biology. This field has been increasingly progressing as a new and independent comparative science. However, we argue that evo-devo’s comparative approach is challenged by several metaphysical, methodological and socio-disciplinary issues related to the foundation of heuristic functions of model organisms and the possible criteria to be adopted for their selection. In addition, new tools have to be (...) developed to deal with newly chosen model organisms. Therefore, we present a modelling framework suitable to integrate data on individual variation into evo-devo studies on new model organisms and thus to compensate for current idealization practices deliberately suppressing variation. (shrink)

A un secolo e mezzo dalla pubblicazione dell'Origine delle specie, la nozione di omologia di Owen, che implica che due organi o due funzioni a confronto possono essere riconosciuti come “la stessa cosa” continua a dominare gli attuali approcci al problema dell’omologia. L'idea che i caratteri possano “rimanere se stessi” attraverso un numero indefinito (anche se finito) di stati alternativi che si susseguono nel corso dell'evoluzione è probabilmente basato su un'interpretazione idealistica di come gli organismi si evolvono. Se si dà (...) per scontata l'esistenza di caratteristiche del corpo che conservano la loro identità nel cambiamento, l'esistenza di omologhi può essere spiegata (i) in termini di leggi universali della forma, magari nella forma moderna dello strutturalismo di processo, o (ii) come il prodotto di discendenza comune, o (iii) in termini di cause prossime responsabili della comparsa di moduli di sviluppo conservati. Tuttavia, leggendo la storia della vita attraverso la lente dell’evoluzione, appare molto problematico descrivere un organismo come una somma di caratteri che, una volta apparsi come novità evolutive, rimangono poi come unità costruttive essenzialmente immutabili tra le quali possiamo predicare (o negare) omologia. Tutti i tratti sono meglio interpretati come incroci complessi e mutevoli di un numero indeterminato di elementi e dei processi che li modellano nel corso dell’ontogenesi e della filogenesi. Di conseguenza, appare raccomandabile un approccio fattoriale, o combinatorio, all’omologia. (shrink)

This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

According to the evolutionary theory, biodiversity is the product of change. However, biodiversity exists also because there are rules against an uncontrolled mixing of individuals or species that would create monsters such as the mythical chimera or the hybrids between lion and tiger. Unease in front of them is not necessarily proportional to the extent of the mixing. We fear most that the consequences of the breakup of a natural boundary may become lasting and uncontrollable. Boundaries, however, work also in (...) different way. First, you should not eat another member of your species. Second, individuality should not been breached by grafting together two individuals of the same species. Third, your enemy should not cross your skin unseen, to feed on you from inside. All these rules, however, are widely breached in nature. Humans have added to this catalogue, challenging borders by a diversity of practices that do not respect the boundaries within and between the species. All these practices are the ultimate treat – material and cultural alike – to the survival of biodiversity. (shrink)

Because of the steady involvement of organisms in evolutionary dynamics, of the frequent occurrence of uniparental reproduction and of the diverse outcome of hybridisation events, the species category does not easily apply to a sizeable part of the living world. Problematic is also often the use of the category of the individual, especially in the case of polyembryony, and the distinction between metamorphosis of the individual and metagenesis (alternation of generations) is also often uncertain. More generally, fixing origins is commonly (...) arbitrary, in respect to phylogeny (‘origin’ of species) and ontogeny (‘origin’ of individual) alike. (shrink)

What is a larva, if it is not what survives of an ancestor's adult, compressed into a transient pre‐reproductive phase, as suggested by Haeckel's largely disreputed model of evolution by recapitulation? A recently published article hypothesizes that larva and adult of holometabolous insects are developmental expressions of two different genomes coexisting in the same animal as a result of an ancient hybridization event between an onychophoran and a primitive insect with eventless post‐embryonic development. More likely, however, larvae originated from late (...) embryonic or early post‐embryonic stages of ancestors with direct development. Evolutionary novelties would thus be intercalary rather than terminal, with respect to the ancestor's ontogenetic schedule. This scenario, supported by current research on holometabolous insects and marine invertebrates with complex life cycles, offers a serious alternative to the traditional scenario (‘what is early in ontogeny is also early in phylogeny’) underlying the current perception of the evolution of genetic regulatory networks. (shrink)

Is it possible, and in the first place is it even desirable, to define what "development" means and to determine the scope of the field called "developmental biology"? Though these questions appeared crucial for the founders of "developmental biology" in the 1950s, there seems to be no consensus today about the need to address them. Here, in a combined biological, philosophical, and historical approach, we ask whether it is possible and useful to define biological development, and, if such a definition (...) is indeed possible and useful, which definition can be considered as the most satisfactory. (shrink)

This study analyzes shells of marine gastropods of a zoological museum and the Latin epithets expressing perceptual and connotative attributes that they have received in the standard, Linnaean nomenclature. Making use of the Osgood semantic differential, we presented the subjects with digital 3-D reproductions of the shell specimens to be subjectively evaluated according to 17 pairs of attributes. The results show that, overall, the subjective evaluations given by the subjects are consistent, which suggests that an intersubjective characterization of the shells (...) as wholes according to their qualitative and morphological traits is possible and scientifically explicable. This may apply to other biological items as well. The results also show that the epithets given to the shells by taxonomists do not always reflect the perceptual evaluation of the general population, being a product of the well-known ambiguity in taxonomic categorization and naming. (shrink)

Edited by Alessandro Minelli and Thomas Pradeu, Towards a Theory of Development gathers essays by biologists and philosophers, which display a diversity of theoretical perspectives. The discussions not only cover the state of art, but broaden our vision of what development includes and provide pointers for future research. Interestingly, all contributors agree that explanations should not just be gene-centered, and virtually none use design and other engineering metaphors to articulate principles of cellular and organismal organization. I comment in (...) particular on the issue of how to construe the notion of a ‘theory’ and whether developmental biology has or should aspire to have theories, which four of the contributions discuss in detail while taking opposing positions. Beyond construing a theory in terms of its empirical content, my aim is to shift the focus toward the role that theories have for guiding future scientific theorizing and practice. Such a conception of ‘theory’ is particularly important in the context of development, because arriving at a theoretical framework that provides guidance for the discipline of developmental biology as a whole is more plausible than a unified representation of development across all taxa. (shrink)

Some computational phenomena rely essentially on pragmatic considerations, and seem to undermine the independence of the specification from the implementation. These include software development, deviant uses, esoteric languages and recent data-driven applications. To account for them, the interaction between pragmatics, epistemology and ontology in computational artefacts seems essential, indicating the need to recover the role of the language metaphor. We propose a User Levels (ULs) structure as a pragmatic complement to the Levels of Abstraction (LoAs)-based structure defining the ontology and (...) epistemology of computational artefacts. ULs identify a flexible hierarchy in which users bear their own semantic and normative requirements, possibly competing with the logical specification. We formulate a notion of computational act intended in its pragmatic sense, alongside pragmatic versions of implementation and correctness. (shrink)

The Wealth of Ideas, first published in 2005, traces the history of economic thought, from its prehistory to the present day. In this eloquently written, scientifically rigorous and well documented book, chapters on William Petty, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, William Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger, Léon Walras, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter and Piero Sraffa alternate with chapters on other important figures and on debates of the period. Economic thought is seen as developing between two opposite poles: (...) a subjective one, based on the ideas of scarcity and utility, and an objective one based on the notions of physical costs and surplus. Professor Roncaglia focuses on the different views of the economy and society and on their evolution over time and critically evaluates the foundations of the scarcity-utility approach in comparison with the Classical/Keynesian approach. (shrink)

Philosophers distinguish between having a property essentially and having it accidentally. The way the distinction has been drawn suggests that it is modal in character, and so that it can be captured in terms of necessity, or cognate notions. The present chapter takes the suggestion at face value by considering a number of modal characterizations of the essential/accidental distinction that have been articulated and discussed since the early 20th century, as well as some of the challenges that they face.

El presente ensayo quiere ilustrar, en primer lugar, el significado y el ámbito de aplicación de la bioinformática, entendida como "el campo de la ciencia en el que la biología y la informática se funden en una disciplina única para favorecer nuevos descubrimientos biológicos". En segundo lugar, se detiene sobre las consecuencias biológicas de las biotecnologías, en forma particular sobre el cambiamiento radical de la relación del hombre consigo mismo y con la naturaleza, y sobre la función del bioderecho, que (...) tiene que reglamentar una ciencia, muy a menudo "incierta", y establecer los criterios para la atribución de la subjetividad jurídica a los individuos "genéticamente manipulados".This essay wants to illustrate, in first place, the biocomputing meaning and its field of application, taken it as "the field of science in which biology and computer science melt together in a unique discipline to help new biologic discoveries". In second place, draw up over the biological consequences of biotechnologies, in particular, on the radical changing of the relationship of man with himself and with nature, and about the function of biolaw, which has to regulate these science, "uncertain" very often and to establish the criteria to conferring juridical subjectivity to "genetically manipulated" persons. (shrink)

How and to what extent do people take into account the intentions of others? Alessandro Duranti sets out to answer this question, showing that the role of intentions in human interaction is variable across cultures and contexts. Through careful analysis of data collected over three decades in US and Pacific societies, Duranti demonstrates that, in some communities, social actors avoid intentional discourse, focusing on the consequences of actions rather than on their alleged original goals. In other cases, he argues, (...) people do speculate about their own intentions or guess the intentions of others, including in some societies where it was previously assumed they avoid doing so. To account for such variation, Duranti proposes an 'intentional continuum', a concept that draws from phenomenology and the detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction. A combination of new essays and classic re-evaluations, the book draws together findings from anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to offer a penetrating account of the role of intentions in defining human action. (shrink)

Wittgenstein has written a great number of remarks relevant to aesthetical issues: he has questioned the relation between aesthetics and psychology as well as the status of our norms of judgment; he has drawn philosophers attention to such topics as aspect-seeing and aspect-dawning, and has brought insights into the nature of our aesthetic reactions. The examination of this wide range of topics is far from being completed, and the purpose of this book is to contribute to such completion. It gathers (...) both papers discussing some of Wittgenstein s most provocative and intriguing statements on aesthetics, and papers bringing out their implications for art critic and art history, as well as their significance to epistemology and to the study of human mind.". (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a system of modal connexive logic based on a situation semantics. In general, modal connexive logics are extensions of standard modal logics that incorporate Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theses, that is the thesis that a sentence cannot imply its negation and the thesis that a sentence cannot imply a pair of contradictory sentences. A key problem in devising a connexive logic is to come up with a system that is both sufficiently strong to (...) fulfill some specific connexive theses and sufficiently well-motivated from a semantical point of view. The approach proposed here tries to address this problem by defining an appropriate connexive relation in terms of more basic notions. The result is a well-motivated system of modal connexive logic that nicely fits in both with the traditional ideas concerning the connexive conditional and with the current developments in connexive logic. (shrink)

L’ambientazione dell’itinerario che qui si propone rinvia ad un’ermeneutica del diritto che concentra l’attenzione non su un settore – costituito da metodologie e principi ai quali attingere per la soluzione di conflitti nella prassi –, ma su una riflessione rigorosa. Tale ordine di pensiero muove dalla filosofia aristotelica del De Interpretatione, sino ai problemi della globalizzazione, trattati interrogandosi se l’ermeneutica occupi o meno un posto prioritario nel complesso universum giuridico. Si prende atto che l’arte dell’interpretazione appare sostituibile con un insieme (...) di teorie argomentative che, con il loro management, rischiano di banalizzare i concetti della responsabilità personale nella vita quotidiana dell’amministrazione della giustizia. (shrink)

This book contains essential contributions to enrich and broaden the application field of pragmatics. It provides an example of how the fruitful reflections and refined conceptual distinctions born in the philosophical field can find a practical application in addressing social, cognitive, clinical, and psychological problems. Its chapters address, from different points of view, the relationship between pragmatic linguistics and philosophy, and outline the possible application of pragmatic theories to different domains. Developed during the third Pragmasophia international conference, whose name is (...) derived from the Greek terms πρᾶγμα (action, fact) and σοφία (knowledge, science), the book aligns itself with its aim to study human actions and activities and how they take shape through language. But ‘Pragma’ and ‘Sophia’ also signal another purpose: highlighting the importance of creating links between empirical investigations on language use, and more traditional philosophical approaches. In this reading, ‘Pragma’ represents the experimental goal devoted to analysing and interpreting language facts. In contrast, the term ‘Sophia’ recalls the original vocation of past philosophers to pursue an ideal of ‘pure knowledge’, disconnected from any practical-economic interest. While maintaining the conference's original purpose of encouraging productive comparisons between different approaches, the book consists of two sections: first, on philosophical approaches, recalls more theoretical aspects (closer to the term ‘Sophia’); the second, ‘Inferential and Cognitive Pragmatics,’ addresses more practical issues affecting domains such as Greek literature, pragmatic disorders, dictionary entries, and speech analysis. The reader, whether in linguists, philosophy or psychology, obtains a complete overview of the most advanced current research lines, both theoretical and empirical, and thus contributes to broadening the scope of pragmatics. (shrink)

Ted Sider has famously argued that existence, in the unrestricted sense of ontology, cannot be vague, as long as vagueness is modeled by means of precisifications. The first section of Chapter 9 exposes some controversial assumptions underlying Sider’s alleged reductio of vague existence. The upshot of the discussion is that, although existence cannot be vague, it can be super-vague, i.e. higher-order vague, for all orders. The second section develops and defends a novel framework, dubbed negative supervaluationary semantics, which makes room (...) for the possibility of super-vague existence. (shrink)

Keenan (1987) observed that trivial determiners built from basic existential determiners (e.g.,either zero or else more than zero) are allowed inthere-insertion contexts, and that trivial determiners built from basic non-existential determiners (e.g.,either all or else not all) are not. This result is unexpected under the analyses ofthere-sentences proposed in Barwise and Cooper (1981), Higginbotham (1987), and Keenan (1987). I argue that the class of NPs barred from the postverbal position ofthere-sentences (strong NPs) is correctly characterized in presuppositional terms, as suggested (...) in de Jong and Verkuyl (1985) and Lumsden (1988). According to this characterization, strong NPs share one of the defining components of definiteness proposed in Heim (1982), namely the Descriptive Content Condition (DCC). How to derive the prohibition against strong NPs inthere-insertion contexts (definiteness effect) from the fact that strong NPs meet the DCC is not obvious, however. I argue that accounting for this prohibition involves regarding the XP-coda in [there be NP XP] as providing the contextual domain for the interpretation of the postverbal NP. (shrink)

Philosophers have rightly condemned lookism—that is, discrimination in favor of attractive people or against unattractive people—in education, the justice system, the workplace and elsewhere. Surprisingly, however, the almost universal preference for attractive romantic and sexual partners has rarely received serious ethical scrutiny. On its face, it’s unclear whether this is a form of discrimination we should reject or tolerate. I consider arguments for both views. On the one hand, a strong case can be made that preferring attractive partners is bad. (...) The idea is that choosing partners based on looks seems essentially similar to other objectionable forms of discrimination. (In particular, the preference for attractive partners is arguably both unfair and harmful to a significant degree.) One can try to resist this conclusion in several ways. I consider three possible replies. The first has to do with the possibility of controlling our partner preferences. The second pertains to attractiveness and “good genes”. The last attempts to link certain aspects of attractiveness to a prospective partner’s personality and values. I argue that the first two replies fail conclusively, while the third only amounts to a limited defense of a particular kind of attractiveness preference. So the idea that we should often avoid preferring attractive partners is compelling. (shrink)