ABSTRACT
In 1985, when Donn Rosen proposed his list of assumptions that inhibit progress in comparative biology (Rosen 2016), the resurgence of interest in evolutionary developmental biology was, if not in its infancy, certainly not much more than a toddler. The rst usage of the term evolutionary developmental biology was apparently only two years earlier in 1983 (according to Hall 2012), and the homeobox had just been discovered (McGinnis et al. 1984a,b; Scott and Weiner 1984). It is therefore that much more impressive that Rosen’s Evolutionary Theory list included three items that have been reinvigorated by the subsequent decades of research in “evo-devo.” Two of these inhibiting assumptions will be the main focus of this essay: Number 5 read, “Random mutation, natural selection and microevolution combine as a progressive research program to explain the hierarchy of organisms,” and number 10 stated, “Goldschmidt’s ideas must be wrong because they conict with neo-Darwinism.” Number 10 on his list was followed by number 11, “Ditto for neolamarckism,” a related topic that will be dealt with only briey herein.
