ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the scientific revolution of the 17th century and the rise of the new mechanistic philosophy, Aristotle’s concept of formal causation was banished from theoretical biology: its intrinsically teleological activity was explained away as nothing more than the phenomenal residue of the extrinsic forces of selection operating upon the passive participants of evolutionary processes. However, with the advent of the new science of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), organism-centred evolutionary explanations—and with them, non-mechanistic models of development—are again becoming prominent. This chapter argues that the scientific paradigm shift of evo-devo has important philosophical implications for our conception of natural kinds and the reality of formal causation.
