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    Evolution's Eye
    A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide

    Susan Oyama (Author)

    9780822324362

    Hardback, published 3 May 2000

    288 pages, 6 figures
    24.2 x 16.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.848 kg

    “Oyama writes elegantly and from a deep intellectual base. This alternative view to the dominant genetic determinism will be of interest to all who seek a more complex view of human nature. It is an excellent book, beautifully composed.”-Katherine Nelson, City University of New York
    “Susan Oyama's Ontogeny of Information provided a navigational chart for researchers seeking to avoid the shoals of the nature-nurture dichotomy. Here, in Evolution's Eye, she good-humoredly unmasks the rhetorical stratagems of reflexive genecentrism, while continuing to strengthen the case for the integrative, multifocal approach of developmental systems theory.”-Helen E. Longino, University of Minnesota
    “To think of nature and nurture as two distinct categories is not only wrong, Susan Oyama convincingly argues, but doing so hobbles our attempts to understand the nature of development and evolution at every level. Hers is a voice that needs to be heard.”-Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    In recent decades, Susan Oyama and her colleagues in the burgeoning field of developmental systems theory have rejected the determinism inherent in the nature/nurture debate, arguing that behavior cannot be reduced to distinct biological or environmental causes. In Evolution’s Eye Oyama elaborates on her pioneering work on developmental systems by spelling out that work’s implications for the fields of evolutionary theory, developmental and social psychology, feminism, and epistemology. Her approach profoundly alters our understanding of the biological processes of development and evolution and the interrelationships between them.
    While acknowledging that, in an uncertain world, it is easy to “blame it on the genes,” Oyama claims that the renewed trend toward genetic determinism colors the way we think about everything from human evolution to sexual orientation and personal responsibility. She presents instead a view that focuses on how a wide variety of developmental factors interact in the multileveled developmental systems that give rise to organisms. Shifting attention away from genes and the environment as causes for behavior, she convincingly shows the benefits that come from thinking about life processes in terms of developmental systems that produce, sustain, and change living beings over both developmental and evolutionary time.
    Providing a genuine alternative to genetic and environmental determinism, as well as to unsuccessful compromises with which others have tried to replace them, Evolution’s Eye will fascinate students and scholars who work in the fields of evolution, psychology, human biology, and philosophy of science. Feminists and others who seek a more complex view of human nature will find her work especially congenial.

    Acknowledgments
    Introduction
    Part 1: Looking at Development and Evolution
    Transmission and Construction: Levels and the Problem of Heredity
    What Does the Phenocopy Copy? Originals and Fakes in Biology

    Ontogeny and the Central Dogma: Do We Need the Concept of Genetic
    Programming in Order to Have an Evolutionary Perspective?

    Stasis, Development, and Heredity: Models of Stability and Change

    The Accidental Chordate: Contingency in Developmental Systems
    Part 2: Looking at Ourselves
    Essentialism, Women, and War: Protesting Too Much, Protesting Too
    Little
    The Conceptualization of Nature: Nature as Design
    Bodies and Minds: Dualism in Evolutionary Theory
    How Shall I Name Thee? The Construction of Natural Selves
    Evolutionary and Developmental Formation: Politics of the Boundary
    Notes
    References
    Index

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