The Modern Synthesis has dominated biology for 80 years. It was formulated in 1942, a decade before the major achievements of molecular biology, including the Double Helix and the Central Dogma. When first formulated in the 1950s these discoveries and concepts seemed initially to completely justify the central genetic assumptions of the Modern Synthesis. The Double Helix provided the basis for highly accurate DNA replication, while the Central Dogma was viewed as supporting the Weismann Barrier, so excluding the inheritance of (...) acquired characteristics. This article examines the language of the Modern Synthesis and reveals that it is based on four important misinterpretations of what molecular biology had shown, so forming the basis of the four Illusions: 1. Natural Selection; 2. The Weismann Barrier; 3. The Rejection of Darwin’s Gemmules; 4. The Central Dogma. A multi-level organisation view of biology avoids these illusions through the principle of biological relativity. Molecular biology does not therefore confirm the assumptions of the Modern Synthesis. (shrink)

The Enchantment of Words is a study of Wittgenstein's early masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Recent years have seen a great revival of interest in the Tractatus. McManus's study of the work offers novel readings of all its major themes and sheds light on issues in metaphysics, ethics and the philosophies of mind, language, and logic.

The standard semantic definition of consequence with respect to a selected set X of symbols, in terms of truth preservation under replacement (Bolzano) or reinterpretation (Tarski) of symbols outside X, yields a function mapping X to a consequence relation ⇒x. We investigate a function going in the other direction, thus extracting the constants of a given consequence relation, and we show that this function (a) retrieves the usual logical constants from the usual logical consequence relations, and (b) is an inverse (...) to—more precisely, forms a Galois connection with—the Bolzano-Tarski function. (shrink)

Spinoza discovered and studied Descartes's philosophy at the school of Van den Enden and then at the University of Leiden. Spinoza is seen as providing metaphysical views of unparalleled audacity, which remain highly exciting and offer a source of inspiration and a source of theoretical models in a wide variety of fields, including neurobiology. The most general of Spinoza's intentions is to expound in accordance with “the prolix Geometric order” what Descartes had left in a more informal one. Spinoza's original (...) distance from Cartesian conceptions, before becoming obvious in the metaphysical views of the Ethics, is already noticeable in the TIE. In metaphysics, the Spinoza‐Descartes relationship is complex, but cannot be said to take the form of an implicit dialogue or a community of inspiration. Descartes's emphasis on the use of free will, the gap between the two authors in matters of moral anthropology is therefore quite limited. (shrink)

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...) Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components. (shrink)

How do we reconcile Husserl’s repeated criticism of Mach’s phenomenalism almost everywhere in his work with the leading role that Husserl seems to attribute to Mach in the genesis of his own phenomenology? To answer this question, we shall examine, first, the narrow relation that Husserl establishes between his phenomenological method and Mach’s descriptivism. Second, we shall examine two aspects of Husserl’s criticism of Mach: the first concerns phenomenalism and Mach’s doctrine of elements, while the second concerns the principle of (...) economy of thought, which Husserl closely associates with a form of psychologism in his Logical Investigations . Our working hypothesis is that the apparent contradictory comments of Husserl regarding Mach’s positivism can be partially explained by the double status he confers to his own phenomenology—as a philosophical program radically opposed to positivism, and as a method akin to Mach’s descriptivism. (shrink)

David Pietraszewski's theory of social groups offers a developmentally plausible account of how we reason about group membership, as it delineates clear boundaries to the hypothesis space that children must navigate. Merits notwithstanding, the account remains silent with respect to the arbitration problem: It does not explain how children can appropriately select among competing frames when interpreting social interactions.

Conscious Agency is a major driver of evolution. Artificial Selection (i.e. Conscious Selection by human breeders) was the foil against which Charles Darwin defined Natural Selection. In later work, he extended Artificial Selection to other species. That ability for social (e.g. sexual) selection must have evolved. Jablonka and Ginsburg identify markers of conscious agency, such as Unlimited Associative Learning (UAL), and show that it must have existed at the time of the Cambrian Explosion. To their insights, my commentary argues that (...) the harnessing of stochasticity was also involved in the evolution of the faculty of choice in organisms. (shrink)

La pensee de Ludwig Wittgenstein est animee, tout au long des annees 1930 et 1940, par une meditation de la question du temps. C'est un de ses aspects les plus mal connus. Ce livre vise a restituer cette meditation dans sa force et sa singularite, afin d'etablir la contribution qu'elle apporte a la tradition qui s'est consacree a cette question majeure de la philosophie. Il montre d'abord comment la tentation d'accorder un privilege au present constitue un element essentiel du projet (...) phenomenologique wittgensteinien de 1929, avant d'explorer le travail critique auquel Wittgenstein soumet ce projet au cours des deux decennies suivantes, et qui le conduit a situer dans un certain rapport a notre langage l'origine de notre facon de penser la temporalite. Une analyse originale du langage ordinaire permet ainsi de reevaluer les theories classiques du temps que proposent la phenomenologie, la philosophie de la psychologie et la philosophie du langage. (shrink)

The primary concern of this paper is Hume's account of the moral difference between humans and other animals. In order to clarify this difference Hume's views regarding reason, sympathy, and human sentiment are examined. The purpose of this investigation is threefold. First, Hume's position on the moral difference between humans and other animals is clarified. It is argued that this difference is properly traced to Hume's account of the sentiment of humanity. Second, Hume is defended against the claim that his (...) position on this matter is inconsistent. Third, it is argued that Hume's theory of morality leaves open the possibility that some earthly species other than our own may be properly understood as moral. (shrink)

What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? Neuroconstructivism is a pioneering 2 volume work that sets out a whole new framework for considering the complex topic of development, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging.

Je m'intéresse ici à la question de savoir ce qu’il y a de descriptif dans la phénoménologie et ce qu’il y a de phénoménologique dans l’usage de la notion de description dans la philosophie contemporaine. Pour répondre à cette question, je retrace, dans un premier temps, les origines de la notion de psychologie descriptive au dix-neuvième siècle et j’identifie ensuite quelques-uns des traits caractéristiques du concept husserlien de description; dans un deuxième temps, j’examinerai quelques aspects du concept de description tel (...) qu’on l’utilise dans la tradition analytique depuis le dernier Wittgenstein en portant une attention particulière à la question de savoir s’il recoupe ou non le concept husserlien; dans la troisième partie, j’esquisse rapidement le problème de la conscience dans la perspective d’un fossé de l’explication et j’examine brièvement la question de savoir si et à quelle condition la phénoménologie descriptive peut y apporter sa contribution. (shrink)

De 1683 a 1694, Antoine Arnauld et Nicolas Malebranche, anciens amis et pretres que leur interet pour Descartes, leur reverence pour Augustin et leur commune inquietude face au libertinage semblaient pourtant destiner a s'entendre, polemiquerent violemment. En insistant sur l'aspect philosophique de ces debats, cet ouvrage propose la premiere interpretation d'ensemble de cette celebre confrontation. Y a-t-il de serieuses raisons philosophiques au desaccord entre Arnauld et Malebranche? Leur determination permet-elle d'eclairer certains aspects du malebranchisme? Existe-t-il une philosophie d'Antoine Arnauld et (...) peut-on en preciser les contenus? Ces trois questions centrales conduisent au point de fuite de ce travail: l'impuissance theologique du cartesianisme est-elle congenitale, ou bien peut-on tirer des dividendes theologiques de la philosophie cartesienne sans en faire jouer les structures et en modifier les concepts fondamentaux? (shrink)

Hintikka makes a distinction between two kinds of games: truthconstituting games and truth-seeking games. His well-known game-theoretical semantics for first-order classical logic and its independence-friendly extension belongs to the first class of games. In order to ground Hintikka’s claim that truth-constituting games are genuine verification and falsification games that make explicit the language games underlying the use of logical constants, it would be desirable to establish a substantial link between these two kinds of games. Adapting a result from Thierry Coquand, (...) we propose such a link, based on a slight modification of Hintikka’s games, in which we allow backward playing for ∃loïse. In this new setting, it can be proven that sequent rules for first-order logic, including the cut rule, are admissible, in the sense that for each rule, there exists an algorithm which turns winning strategies for the premisses into a winning strategy for the conclusion. Thus, proofs, as results of truth-seeking games, can be seen. (shrink)

L’expérience est la plupart du temps entendue selon la vulgate philosophique et épistémologique comme une expérimentation technoscientifique. Mais cette acception oublie un sens plus originaire de l’experientia. Ce sens est le temps. Or si l’on regarde ce que signifie l’expérience « temporale », c’est-à-dire extatique, on s’aperçoit qu’elle est une mise à l’épreuve, un éprouver hors de soi, c’est-à-dire l’expérience affectuelle d’un irreprésentable. C’est de cela dont témoignent les artistes, et spécialement les écrivains Clarice Lispector avec le « é da (...) coisa » et Samuel Beckett avec l’« Innommable ». Ces mots, à l’épreuve de l’échec, témoignent de ce qui, dans la vie comme existence, est plus que la vie, ouvrant aux autres mondes et aux nouveaux possibles. (shrink)

C’est selon la perspective de l’image comme représentation que nous examinons et mettons en parallèle les œuvres de Marcel Duchamp et de Francis Bacon. Duchamp s’extirpe de l’univers de la peinture, émancipe l’art de son champ exclusivement pictural, « rétinien ». Bacon emprunte une voie intermédiaire : celle de la « forme sensible », de la « Figure », c’est-à-dire du « figural ». Qu’il s’agisse de la déformation avec Bacon ou de la transformation avec Duchamp, la représentation n’est telle (...) que parce qu’elle témoigne d’un quelque chose, irreprésentable ou imprésentable, qui l’excède : l’événement de la Figure se nomme ainsi dé-figure et trans-figure. (shrink)

RésuméĽauteur propose ?illustrer et ?expliquer le concept de comprehension en reprenant le probleme de I'asymetrie des sujets et des predicats tel que P. F. Strawson ľa posé et partiellement résolu. II s'agit de comprendre, en un sens fort, le phénomene de ľasymétrie. Un rapprochement entre philosophie logique et sémantique linguistique permet de généraliser la solution strawsonienne: ?une part, on peut traiter simultanément le cas de la predication monadique et celui des relations dyadiques; ?autre part et surtout, la cause profonde de (...) ľasymetrie ainsi généralisée semble se trouver dans une autre asymétrie que ľauteur identifie sous le nom ? asymétrie quantitative ≪. Ce résultat confirme que, tant en philosophie logique qu'en linguistique, une methode informelle est féconde, et en même temps aussi rigoureuse que la méthode formelle.SummaryBy way of illustrating and clarifying the concept of understanding in the theoretical sense in which to understand something is tantamount to being able to explain it, the author takes up the problem of the asymmetry of subjects and predicates with regard to negation in philosophical logic. How much explanation can we hope achieve in such a field? If we bring to bear on the problem of the asymmetry recent results in linguistic semantics, we get a generalization of P. F. Strawson's proposed solution: an abstract structure is shown to be common to monadic predication and dyadic relations, and the cause of the asymmetry which is characteristic of that structure is identified as a new, probably “quantitative” asymmetry between subjects and predicates. These results contribute to substantiate the case for an informal method, both in philosophical logic and in general linguistics. (shrink)

Karl Popper et David Miller ont soutenu l'idée selon laquelle le soutien probabiliste positif = p − p > 0) que e apporte á h, lorsque de h on déduit e, ne justifie en rien l'espoir de pouvoir construire une logique inductive fondée sur le calcul des probabilityés.

This chapter explores the notion of an authentic affective life by examining three models of Heideggerian authenticity in light of his remarks on emotion. In addition to the familiar “decisionist model,” the chapter examines what I call the “standpoint model” and the “all things considered judgment model”. Each of these models suggests a distinctive picture of what authenticity in one’s affective life might be, and considering the plausibility of these pictures provides an interesting way to re-consider the plausibility of those (...) models. The chapter argues that authentic affect as the decisionist model understands it requires a level of control over our emotions that is inherently implausible and incompatible with Heidegger’s understanding of them, and that the standpoint model’s understanding of authentic affect requires a uniformity in our emotions which should be rejected on the same grounds. Ultimately, the chapter argues in favor of the AJM on the grounds that its picture of affective authenticity—an openness to the many ways in which my situation matters to me, touches me and moves me whether I like it or not—is both truer to our actual emotional lives and more harmonious with Heidegger’s own understanding of these matters. (shrink)

Christian Doppler, an Austrian physicist, described in 1842 the apparent change in frequency of a wave when motion of the source or the observer is involved. Named after him, this change in observational frequencies is known as the Doppler Effect. The formula for calculating the frequency change is taught in universities, textbooks, Youtube, and on the internet. Understanding the Doppler effect is used in applications such as radar. Yet, the formula is wrong, yielding a different result when applying the same (...) velocity, once to the source, then to the observer. This article will show the formula, the error, the correction to the formula, and how it disproves Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity. (shrink)

The modern world is confronted with a series of global problems, exacerbated by technological advancements. In this context, concerns arise in the public consciousness regarding the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to surpass humans in intellectual and creative activities. The topic of AI creativity becomes pertinent and sparks debates within the scientific community regarding its creative potential. In response to these challenges, members of the Club of Rome in 2018 propose the concept of a new Enlightenment and the principle of (...) balance as a response to the demands of technological development. These ideas underscore the need for a balanced approach to technical progress, taking into account global values and ethical principles. I explore the definitions of creativity and AI, formulate criteria for assessing creativity, and analyse recent achievements in modelling creative processes in AI. I also focus on the utilisation of various algorithms for implementing diverse forms of creative activities, including text, image and music generation. Additionally, I present diverse opinions of researchers regarding creativity in AI. To systematise these perspectives, I propose a classification which allows their ranking. The conclusion emphasises that currently the issue of evaluating the creative potential of AI lacks a definitive solution, underscoring the relevance of further research. The future outlook may alter this situation, prompting the necessity to focus on predicting potential consequences of technological developments and developing mechanisms for controlling AI activities; humans, after all, bear responsibility for AI actions. Such an approach aligns with the concept of a new Enlightenment which seeks a balance between technological advancements and the preservation of global harmony. (shrink)

Introduction au numéro spécial de la Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger en hommage au centenaire de la mort de Franz Brentano.

"Aucun philosophe n'est plus connu que Descartes, et aucun n'est plus mal connu. Chacun croit savoir ce qu'il a dit, et beaucoup se dispensent de le lire. En vingt et un chapitres clairs et vifs, qui touchent aux différentes parties de l'oeuvre (méthode, métaphysique, physique, morale), ce livre dresse un tableau des méprises les plus constantes et présente les textes de nature à les dissiper. La raison cartésienne n'est pas sèche et doctrinaire comme on l'imagine : elle est exceptionnellement réfléchie (...) et par là toujours exemplaire."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In Pascal’s Pensées, at the very end of the so-called “wager” fragment, we find this intriguing remark intended to win once and for all the whole conviction of the “libertine” the apologist is addressing to : “I will tell you that you will win thereby in this life”. This article endeavours to reconsider this remark seriously, as it has been somewhat neglected by the canonical commentaries on the “wager”. We begin by determining the reasons that lead the apologist to this (...) final remark, then we attempt to define its meaning and scope in Pascal’s apologetic project. Next we seek to identify the “gain in this life” that is promised to the libertine who adopts a Christian lifestyle. This leads to study how Pascal analyses joy. To conclude we propose some more general thoughts about the strategies this fragment of Les Pensées suggests to today’s Christian apologetics. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a psychologically-informed philosophical account of the phenomenology of episodic remembering. The literature on epistemic or metacognitive feelings has grown considerably in recent years, and there are persuasive reasons, both conceptual and empirical, in favour of the view that the phenomenology of remembering—autonoetic consciousness, as Tulving influentially referred to it, or the feeling of pastness, as we will refer to it here—is an epistemic feeling, but few philosophical treatments of this phenomenology as an epistemic feeling have (...) so far been proposed. Building on insights from the psychological literature, we argue that a form of feeling-based metacognition is involved in episodic remembering and develop an integrated metacognitive feeling-based view that addresses several key aspects of the feeling of pastness, namely, its status as a feeling, its content, and its relationship to the first-order memories the phenomenology of which it provides. (shrink)

This paper explores a variety of kinds of apparent disagreement of which it may be held that they involve failure to disagree in that, at least in some broad sense, the disputants use the same words to express different meanings or concepts. It is argued that it is hard to rebut the claim that some apparent disagreements about personal identity fall into a particular sub-category of this broad type. I conclude both that a "constrained" relativism which I call "quasi-relativism" is (...) appropriate in regard to some central personal-identity debates, and also that, in order to avoid the lamentable conclusion that there is no real disagreement at all in these debates, we should embrace the idea that there is a non-cognitive element in personal identity claims, in virtue of the tight conceptual relations between personal identity claims and value claims of various kinds. (shrink)

Nicolas Malebranche fut le principal représentant du cartésianisme en France. Sa pensée se présente comme une audacieuse tentative de synthèse entre la philosophie « moderne » de Descartes et certains thèmes fondamentaux de l’augustinisme. Malebranche est donc un représentant majeur de ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler le « rationalisme chrétien ».Ce livre expose et analyse une série de thèmes qui fournissent des axes directeurs pour la lecture de l’abondante œuvre de Malebranche. Il fait apparaître l’intérêt philosophique des principales problématiques malebranchistes (...) : la théorie de la connaissance et de l’idée; la question de la connaissance de soi; les rapports entre philosophie et religion; la théorie de la causalité appelée « occasionalisme »; la théodicée. Il tente aussi de suggérer les multiples postérités du malebranchisme, qui exerça une influence considérable sur l’ensemble des penseurs européens du XVIIIe siècle. (shrink)

Cet article opère une comparaison des théories de la proposition — entendue dans sa double dimension sémantique et gnoséologique — du Wittgenstein des Philosophische Bemerkungen et du Russell de The Analysis of Mind . Après avoir rappelé le statut sémantique nouveau que ces théories accordent au temps en intégrant le fait qu’un délai sépare, pour un grand nombre de nos énoncés, leur occurrence et leur vérification , il établit que la notion d’attente est chargée, chez Wittgenstein comme chez Russell , (...) de combler cet écart temporel. Mais — c’est le deuxième point — une notion différente est mobilisée par chacun de ces deux auteurs, et dans un projet théorique à chaque fois différent : alors que Wittgenstein vise à étendre la notion tractatuséenne de relation interne aux relations sémantiques temporelles et à défendre un intentionnalisme logique, Russell cherche au contraire à soutenir une conception externaliste de ces relations de façon à faire droit aux cas où elles sont non-intentionnelles. Pour cela, Wittgenstein adopte un concept appelé ici « intentionnel » de l’attente, alors que Russell s’appuie sur un concept dit « non-intentionnel ». Une conséquence majeure de cette différence — c’est le troisième point — est que la célèbre critique par Wittgenstein de l’analyse russellienne de l’attente se révèle être largement erronée dans la mesure où elle se donne pour cible un concept qui n’est pas celui de Russell. Le quatrième point défendu par l’article est qu’une fois rétabli le concept de Russell, l’externalisme que celui-ci défend est doté d’arguments susceptibles de contrer efficacement la position internaliste et intentionnaliste de Wittgenstein.This paper carries out a comparison between the theories of the proposition — in its semantical and epistemic significance — elaborated respectively by Wittgenstein in Philosophische Bemerkungen and by Russell in The Analysis of Mind . Having recalled that time is endowed with a new semantical status by both theories through acknowledging there is a lapse between many of our utterances and their verification , it brings out that the notion of Erwartung by Wittgenstein and the notion of expectation by Russell are meant to bridge this temporal gap. But — this is the second point — those two notions have two different meanings and they belong to a different theoretical framework by each of those authors : while Wittgenstein’s goal is to extend the Tractarian notion of internal relations to temporal semantic relations in order to support a logical version of intentionalism, Russell aims at favoring an externalist view of those relations and to put forward cases in which they are non-intentional. For these respective purposes, the Erwartung notion elaborated by Wittgenstein is a “intentional” notion, whereas the notion of expectation that Russell adopts is a “non-intentional” notion. One chief consequence of this difference — this is the third point — is that Wittgenstein’s famous criticism of Russell’s analysis of expectation falls short because it targets a notion that is not Russell’s own notion. The fourth point of the paper is that acknowledging Russell’s notion provides externalism with some strong arguments to counter Wittgenstein’s internalist and intentionalist position. (shrink)

Une relation causale appropriée à une scène vécue dans le passé est-elle nécessaire pour qu’une représentation de cette scène en soit le souvenir épisodique? Le présent article expose les réponses qui sont actuellement apportées à ce débat central en philosophie de la mémoire. Il introduit d’abord les conditions définitionnelles avancées par la théorie causale standard, avant d’examiner les critiques qui ont été formulées à leur encontre. L’article présente et discute alors deux familles de théories qui ont été proposées en réaction (...) à ces critiques : les théories causales réformatrices, d’une part, et la théorie anti-causale simulationniste, d’autre part. (shrink)

resumo Este artigo parte da constatação de que a análise jamesiana da consciência do tempo constituiu uma fonte comum fundamental das meditações husserlianas e wittgensteinianas relativas ao tempo, o specious present engendrando tanto o ursprüngliche Zeitfeld de Husserl quanto o fliehende Gegenwart do Wittgenstein de 1929. Em seguida, examino a possibilidade de apreender a articulação entre as concepções do tempo de Husserl e de Wittgenstein no nível de suas respectivas apropriações da análise de James. Respondendo de modo afirmativo, sustento de (...) início que essas apropriações se cruzam na crítica do presentismo jamesiano e da idéia segundo a qual a lembrança é uma imagem-cópia presente. Sustento, em seguida, que o anti-psicologismo dá lugar, no entanto, a desenvolvimentos muito diferentes em Husserl e em Wittgenstein. Aquele, com efeito, visa purificar o "núcleo fenomenológico" contido na análise jamesiana de seus resíduos psicológicos para revelar o que ele nos ensina acerca dos modos de aparecer temporais essenciais. De modo inteiramente diferente, Wittgenstein irá pôr em questão a própria imagem do fluxo do presente de consciência, ao descrever a genealogia dessa imagem a partir de erros acerca da linguagem ordinária. O resultado desse artigo é duplo: de um lado, se a análise jamesiana é realmente uma fonte comum às reflexões husserliana e wittgensteiniana acerca do tempo, no final das contas ela dá lugar a apropriações quase opostas; de outro, o debate James-Husserl-Wittgenstein permite confrontar as abordagens psicológica, fenomenológica e gramatical do tempo, e, desse modo, em particular, especificar esta última. palavras-chave James – Husserl – Wittgenstein – tempo - fenomenologia. (shrink)

What are the processes, from conception to adulthood, that enable a single cell to grow into a sentient adult? The processes that occur along the way are so complex that any attempt to understand development necessitates a multi-disciplinary approach, integrating data from cognitive studies, computational work, and neuroimaging - an approach till now seldom taken in the study of child development. Neuroconstructivism is a major new 2 volume publication that seeks to redress this balance, presenting an integrative new framework for (...) considering development. In the first volume, the authors review up-to-to date findings from neurobiology, brain imaging, child development, computer and robotic modelling to consider why children's thinking develops the way it does. They propose a new synthesis of development that is based on 5 key principles found to operate at many levels of descriptions. They use these principles to explain what causes a number of key developmental phenomena, including infants' interacting with objects, early social cognitive interactions, and the causes of dyslexia. The "neuroconstructivist" framework also shows how developmental disorders do not arise from selective damage to the normal cognitive system, but instead arise from developmental processes that operate under atypical constraints. How these principles work is illustrated in several case studies ranging from perceptual to social and reading development. Finally, the authors use neuroimaging, behavioural analyses, computational simulations and robotic models to provide a way of understanding the mechanisms and processes that cause development to occur. (shrink)