CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2010
| Author | Brzovic, Zdenka |
|---|---|
| Title | The Role of Typological Thinking in Evolutionary Developmental Biology |
| Summary | My aim in this thesis is to address the question about the role of typological thinking in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). Evo-devo is a research programme that combines several fields in biology and that still needs to be fully integrated into the theoretical framework of evolutionary theory. The use of typological thinking in evo-devo has been emphasized as a possible problem for this theoretical integration since typological thinking is perceived as committed to essentialist ontology that is incompatible with the findings of evolutionary theory. In the light of these problems with typological thinking in evolutionary biology, I want to examine if typological thinking in evo-devo is just a useful heuristic in scientific research, or if it is grounded in the theory of evo-devo. My aim is to show that typological thinking in evo-devo is theoretically grounded and that it does not have to be conceived as incompatible with evolutionary theory. While I agree that typological thinking is committed to some form of essentialism, I argue that it is only a weaker form of essentialism (relational essentialism) that does not have to be incompatible with evolutionary theory. |
| Supervisor | Heintz, Christophe |
| Department | Philosophy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2010/brzovic_zdenka.pdf |
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