The Architecture of Evolution: The Science of Form in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology

Tamborini, Marco

ISBN 10: 0822947358 / ISBN 13: 9780822947356

Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9780822947356

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Architecture of Evolution: The Science of Form in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822947358
• ISBN 13: 9780822947356
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the advent of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offered a revolutionary new perspective that transformed the classical neo-Darwinian, gene-centered study of evolution. In The Architecture of Evolution, Marco Tamborini demonstrates how this radical innovation was made possible by the largely forgotten study of morphology. Despite the key role morphology played in the development of evolutionary biology since the 1940s, the architecture of organisms was excluded from the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. And yet, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s and ’80s, morphologists sought to understand how organisms were built and how organismal forms could be generated and controlled. The generation of organic form was, they believed, essential to understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Tamborini explores how the development of evo-devo and the recent organismal turn in biology involved not only the work of morphologists but those outside the biological community with whom they exchanged their data, knowledge, and practices. Together with architects and engineers, they worked to establish a mathematical and theoretical basis for the study of organic form as a mode of construction, developing and reinterpreting important notions that would play a central role in the development of evolutionary developmental biology in the late 1980s. This book sheds light not only on the interdisciplinary basis for many of the key concepts in current developmental biology but also on contributions to the study of organic form outside the English-speaking world.

About the Author

Marco Tamborini is an associate professor at Pegaso University in Italy, where he teaches, supervises students, and conducts research in the history and philosophy of science and technology. He is author of The Architecture of Evolution: The Science of Form in Twentieth-Century Evolutionary Biology.