Includes bibliographical references and index.

Theories of development in biology : problems and perspectives / Alessandro Minelli and Thomas Pradeu -- Regenerating theories in developmental biology / Thomas Pradeu -- The erotetic organization of developmental biology / Alan C. Love -- On the concept of mechanism in development / Johannes Jaeger and James Sharpe -- The epistemological resilience of the concept of morphogenetic field / Davide Vecchi and Isaac Hernández -- Physico-genetics of morphogenesis : the hybrid nature of developmental mechanisms / Stuart A. Newman -- The landscape metaphor in development / Giuseppe Fusco, Roberto Carrer, and Emanuele Serrelli -- Formalizing theories of development : a fugue on the orderliness of change / Scott F. Gilbert and Jonathan Bard -- General theories of evolution and inheritance, but not development? / Wallace Arthur -- Cell differentiation is a stochastic process subjected to natural selection / Jean-Jacques Kupiec.

From genes to gene regulatory networks : the progressive historical construction of a genetic theory of development and evolution / Michel Morange -- Reproduction and scaffolded developmental processes : an integrated evolutionary perspective / James Griesemer -- Comparison of animal and plant development : a right track to establish a theory of development? / Michel Vervoort -- Towards a theory of development through a theory of developmental evolution / Armin P. Moczek -- Developmental disparity / Alessandro Minelli -- Identifying some theories in developmental biology : the case of the cancer stem cell theory / Lucie Laplane -- Animal development in a microbial world / Spencer V. Nyholm and Margaret J. McFall-Ngai.

Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Answers to these innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This text offers a unique exploration of the foundations of ontogeny by asking how the development of living things should be understood. It explores the key concepts of developmental biology, asks whether general principles of development can be discovered, and examines the role of models and theories. This book analyses a wealth of approaches to concepts, models and theories of development, such as gene regulatory networks, accounts based on systems biology and on physics of soft matter, the different articulations of evolution and development, symbiont-induced development, as well as the widely discussed concepts of positional information and morphogenetic field, the idea of a 'programme' of development and its critiques, and the long-standing opposition between preformationist and epigenetic conceptions of development. --