Setting boundaries in evolution: development, genetics, and canalization as a boundary object in evolutionary biology

• Applicant: Maria Alejandra Petino Zappala, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Developmental Biology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563506538

The challenges and failures to integrate developmental biology and population genetics during the 20th century, especially after the establishment of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, have been well documented. However, in the last quarter of the century, work in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) has partially recovered the efforts and, especially, concepts of scholars who are widely acknowledged for attempting to explain phenomena spanning developmental biology and population genetics. Chief figures among these include Conrad Hal Waddington and Ivan Schmalhausen, who are acknowledged as producing prescient insight into current challenges facing any integration of these disciplines. While these figures were later perceived as having failed to establish research programs that built upon these earlier efforts, they are also credited with coining concepts that now figure centrally in field-spanning research and discussions concerning integrative attempts across biological disciplines. In this project, I will analyze trends of conceptual change throughout a cluster of interdisciplinary discussions in 20th century evolutionary biology, and especially the role of conceptual variation in sustaining these synthetic efforts. Focusing on the concept of ‘canalization’, a key idea recovered from earlier attempts and now employed in current debates, I will show how variation in attributed meaning, resulting from both epistemic and non-epistemic factors, had dramatic effects on the possibility of (re)integrating development back into evolutionary biology. In particular, I will demonstrate that these dynamics concerning how to understand canalization affected the concept’s ability to act as an interface between different research communities. An inquiry into the attempts to bridge these constituents of an expanded evolutionary biology will serve to inform current and future integrative attempts by refining our understanding of scientific change and its relationship with the role of concepts in scientific efforts.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position