Centro de Filosofia das Ciências, Departamento de História e Filosofia das Ciências, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016, Lisbon, Portugal.
Acta Biotheor. 2023 Jan 30;71(1):6. doi: 10.1007/s10441-023-09456-8.
In this article we analyse the issue of what accounts for developmental potential, i.e., the possible phenotypes a developing organism can manifest during ontogeny. We shall argue in favour of two theses. First, although the developing organism is the unit of development, the complete causal basis for its potential to develop does neither lie entirely in itself as a whole nor in any specific part of itself (such as its genome). Thus, the extra-organismal environment must be counted as one of the three necessary, partial and complementary causal bases for development potential. Secondly, we shall defend a constructivist view of the developmental process. If the genome, the developing organism and the extra-organismal environment are to be counted as proper elements of the causal basis for an organism's developmental potential, the latter is not a given. Rather, it is the result of an interaction-based construction, a process sometimes generating genuine developmental novelty. We will thus argue for an interactionist multi-causal basis view of developmental potential construction. We contend that our view provides a biologically tenable and metaphysically coherent account of developmental dynamics.
在本文中，我们分析了什么构成了发展潜力，即一个发育中的生物体在个体发生过程中可能表现出的潜在表型。我们将支持两个论点。首先，尽管发育中的生物体是发育的单位，但它发展潜力的完整因果基础既不完全存在于自身整体之中，也不存在于自身的任何特定部分（如基因组）之中。因此，体外环境必须被视为发展潜力的三个必要、部分和互补的因果基础之一。其次，我们将捍卫一种发展过程的建构主义观点。如果基因组、发育中的生物体和体外环境被算作生物体发展潜力的因果基础的适当元素，那么后者不是给定的。相反，它是基于相互作用的建构的结果，这一过程有时会产生真正的发展新颖性。因此，我们将为发展潜力建构的基于相互作用的多因果基础观点进行辩护。我们认为，我们的观点为发展动态提供了一个在生物学上合理且在形而上学上连贯的解释。
