Abstract
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 (established knowledge about biological phenomena), 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.
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Notes
The dynamical systems theory approach employed by Jaeger and Sharpe has also been used in an argument against the mechanistic and engineering approach common in some areas of systems biology to decompose a system and understand the functioning of modules in isolation from each other (Huang 2004).
For discussions of what theories in overall biology are, see Pigliucci et al. (2013).
In fact, one reason for why the term ‘theory’ is rarely used in developmental biology as compared to evolutionary biology and ecology (as evidenced by the bibliometric data with which Pradeu starts out, but which he does not analyze) is that scientists often identify theories with mathematical frameworks.
Moreover, including unification in the definition of ‘theory’ would render false Pradeu’s claim that making explanation and predictions “cannot be played by something else” but theories.
The cancer stem cell theory can explain the facts that cancer cells often have a low ability to divide and create an entire clonal population, that non-metastatic cancer cells are present at distance from the primary tumor, that relapses after apparently successful cancer therapy occur, and that cancer cell populations are heterogeneous. Accounting for the latter without the cancer stem cell theory would require invoking mutation and selection within cancer tissues.
While Vervoort’s contribution tries to argue that there are informative cross-kingdom commonalities, he is clearly aware of the possibility that most commonalities may be more platitudes than principles. This is exacerbated by the fact that no other contribution in the volume discusses plant development.
“I would consider a theory of development any conceptual framework that is applicable to a wide range of organismal diversity and across levels of biological organization and which would allow us to identify, understand, analyse, and derive predictions about the nature of development.” (218–219)
This opposition between theories and questions/problems suggests that Love likewise uses the traditional conception of theories in terms of empirical content only, so as to view other features of scientific theorizing and practice as outside of theories.
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Acknowledgments
I thank Pierrick Bourrat, Wesley Fang, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Paul Griffiths, Adam Hochman, Qiaoying Lu, John Matthewson, Maureen O’Malley, Arnaud Pocheville, Gaëlle Pontarotti, Isobel Ronai, Kim Sterelny, and Karola Stotz for comments on a draft of this essay.
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Brigandt, I. Do we need a ‘theory’ of development?. Biol Philos 31, 603–617 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9493-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9493-z