Abstract
The question of whether it is possible to fit together the developmental and evolutionary explanations raises a number of difficulties. In a sense, it is possible to consider that the problems concerning the development of the individual have nothing to do with those related to the evolution of organisms over time (Wallace B, Can embryologists contribute to an understanding of evolutionary mechanisms? In: Bechtel W (ed) Integrating scientific disciplines: case studies from the life sciences. Springer. pp 149–163. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-94-010-9435-1_9.pdf, 1986). If one describes the development as the temporal trajectory of an individual from the zygote to adult, then the timescale of the individual development appears to be radically different from the evolutionary time scale. This chapter aims to show that the time dimension is an essential element to explain the proximal mechanism of development, and that it remains unspecified if not still largely ignored by biologists. I suggest that by focusing on the characters rather than on the “developmental stages”, developmental biology, while approaching evolution, nonetheless and paradoxically lost sight of the actual temporal dimension its process (Beer, G.R. (de) 1930. Embryology and evolution. Gloucestershire: Clarendon Press; Hamburger V, Hamilton HL, J Morphol 88(1):49–92, 1951). Therefore, consideration and characterization of the timing of development remain to be done: it requires to analyze its peculiarities and the way they have been, or may be apprehended. This focus on the developmental time will allow us to emphasize the importance of time for the explanation of the developmental process.
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Notes
- 1.
Wallace did not explicitly referred to the term “incommensurability” in the article, but to the term “incompatibility.” However, the picture he uses to illustrate his argument (those of a well-known analogy of an optical illusion, an example used by psychologists: a sketch, where you might see in one moment an old woman, in the next a beautiful young lady, but at no time both images simultaneously) implicitly features incommensurability (see Wallace 1986, p. 163).
- 2.
See Ricqlès’, Chap. 11 in this volume.
- 3.
We distinguish “evolutionist explanations” with “evolutionary explanations”. “Evolutionist explanations” are linked to the geneticists’ view on biological explanations, whereas “evolutionary explanations” include both geneticists and developmentalists’ view on these same biological explanations.
- 4.
Developmental systems biology uses computer simulation of multicellular development as a research methodology to understand the function of the very complex processes involved in the development of organisms. This includes simulation of cell signaling, multicellular interactions and regulatory genomic networks in development of multicellular structures and processes (e.g., French flag model by L. Wolpert 1969).
- 5.
Notion used in biology to characterize the traits or set of traits that distinguish one species, one family, one plant/animal from another. The set of observable characters from an organism is its phenotype, which is both due to hereditary factors (genotype) and changes in the environment.
- 6.
Caspar F. Wolff is known as the “father of embryology” (see Needham 1959).
- 7.
“Ontogeny” and “phylogeny” were the terms used (mainly before Darwin’s theory of evolution by the means of natural selection) to characterize and distinguish the developmental process from the evolution of species process.
- 8.
Meckel-Serres law attempted to provide a link between comparative embryology and a “pattern of unification” in the organic world. They argued that fetal deformities result when development prematurely stops. These arrests characterized lower life forms, through which higher order organisms progress during normal development. The Meckel-Serres law stipulates that the embryos of higher order organisms progress through successive stages in which they resemble lower level forms. (http://embryo.asu.edu/pages/meckel-serres-conception-recapitulation, L. O’Connell 2013)
- 9.
I refer to this notion of “geneto-developmental biology” instead of those of developmental biology to highlight the fact that developmental biology, from the beginning, has mainly focused on genetics and molecular biology and not so much on non-genetic processes of development.
- 10.
For example, the following video shows the development of a salamander) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Embryonic_development_of_a_salamander,_filmed_in_the_1920s.ogv.
- 11.
Adam R. Navis (2007) has recently shown that: “the main requirements of [Hamburger & Hamilton’s] project were that the stage had to be easily identifiable by visible features, and they required the smallest possible differences between the features to avoid confusion” (Concerning this question see more at: http://embryo.asu.edu/pages/stages-chick-development#sthash.leTBR20X.dpuf).
- 12.
Virchow was, in the mid-nineteenth century, at the origin of the cellular theory.
- 13.
In the Naturphilosophie, a philosophical trend initiated by German philosophers (Goethe, Kant, Schelling, Hegel…) in the second half of the eighteenth century which influenced Haeckel’s theorization (see Schmitt 2004).
- 14.
See Huneman’s Chap. 14 in this volume.
- 15.
See Tassy’s Chap. 12 in this volume.
- 16.
Allometry studies the relationship of body size to shape and anatomy. It was popularized by D’Arcy Thompson’s book, On Growth and Form, in 1917 and then further developed, through statistical analysis (J. Huxley 1932).
- 17.
Hamburger and Hamilton (1951) argued, “the preparation of a series of normal stages of the chick embryo […] are proving to be increasingly valuable in medical research, as in work on viruses and cancer.” Their main purpose was clearly not to establishing phylogenies between species but rather to establish a standardized view of the development of some animal models.
- 18.
- 19.
The concept refers to the fact that “cells acquire positional identities as in a coordinate system and then interpret this information according to their genetic constitution and developmental history” (Wolpert 1994) (e.g. the concept allows to understand cellular differentiation of cells genetically identical).
- 20.
The hourglass model refers to a model in which “a constant decay or buildup of products from an initial time point is used to control timing, with threshold levels of the product being used as cues to initiate developmental events” (Reiss 2003, p. 364).
- 21.
This notion of clock is different from Gould’s “clock model”. In the present case, the model is used to describe differentiation processes (e.g. somitogenesis in vertebrates: the process by which somites, blocks of mesoderm that give rise to a variety of connective tissues, are formed). The model describes processes of differentiation over time as the result of oscillating expression of particular genes.
- 22.
Recently some studies have been developed which focuses on the timing of transcription and its importance for development, particularly concerning “transcriptional synchrony” (the fact that many genes are transcripted exactly at the same time) (e.g. Lagha et al. 2013). Few years ago, studies have been focusing on the isolation of “heterochronic genes” to assess developmental timing (e.g. Moss 2007, Poethig 2009, Frasch 2008).
- 23.
See Huneman’s Chap. 14 in this volume.
- 24.
See Ricqlès’s Chap. 11 in this volume.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Christophe Bouton and Philippe Huneman for their fruitful comments on previous versions of this manuscript as well as Michel Vervoort for his precious advices and references. This work was supported financially by the “Who Am I?” Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-11-LABX-0071) funded by the French government through its “Investments for the Future” Program operated by the French National Research Agency (ANR) under grant no. ANR-11-IDEX-005-02, as well as by the ANR Program EXPLABIO (Explanations in Evolutionary Biology) under grant no ANR-13-BSH3-0007.
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Nicoglou, A. (2017). The Timing of Development. In: Bouton, C., Huneman, P. (eds) Time of Nature and the Nature of Time. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 326. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53725-2_15
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