ABSTRACT
This chapter is divided into five sections. First, the case is made that, despite their strong commitment to the genetic determination of phenotypic traits, evolutionary theorists have long recognized that phenotypic variability is also a function of environmentally produced changes in behavior and morphology. Because such changes take place over ontogeny, the study of development entered evolutionary thinking early in its history. Additionally, many in Darwin’s time assumed that the various cognitive processes that existed in vertebrate species must have had a significant impact upon individual adaptation and reproduction over the course of evolution. For this reason cognitive processes were viewed as being significantly implicated in the evolutionary process.
