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Developmental Systems Theory Formulated as a Claim about Inherited Representations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Nicholas Shea
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Abstract

Developmental systems theory (DST) is often dismissed on the basis that the causal indispensability of nongenetic factors in evolution and development has long been appreciated. A reformulation makes a more substantive claim: that the special role played by genes is also played by some (but not all) nongenetic resources. That special role can be captured by Shea's ‘inherited representation’. Formulating DST as the claim that there are nongenetic inherited representations turns it into a striking, empirically testable hypothesis. DST's characteristic rejection of a gene versus environment dichotomy is preserved but without dissolving into an interactionist casual soup, as some have alleged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 60 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

For helpful comments and discussion of this material, the author would like to thank Paul Griffiths, Arnon Levy, Russell Powell, Ulrich Stegmann, Tobias Uller, the referees for this journal, and audiences in Oxford and at the symposium on Information and Biological Development at the ISHPSSB meeting in Exeter, July 2007. The research reported here was supported by the Oxford University Press John Fell Research Fund, the James Martin 21st Century School, the Wellcome Centre for Neuroethics, and the Mary Somerville Junior Research Fellowship, Somerville College, University of Oxford.

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