86 Informational environments
other externally induced changes in environmental conditions that work against
long-term stability, part of both the agency of change and the blame for suboptimality may lie with the organisms themselves.
The aspects of specificity of an environment to an organism and of the bi-directional
nature of the organism-environment dynamics are probably best integrated in an
approach that, among other strands of heterodox biological theorising, incorporates environmental and niche constructionism, and that has become known as
developmental systems theory (abbreviated DST and introduced by Susan Oyama
2000). Being a deliberate change of perspective on the animate realm rather than
a conventional predictive theory, as Oyama et al. (2001, 1f ) admit in the introduction to their developmental systems anthology, it reverses the direction of change
taken by Richard Dawkins (1999) in his “gene’s eye view”: Dawkins suggests a
perspective of inquiry under which the organism ultimately becomes “transparent” (1999, 4f, 250), so that what becomes visible instead are replicating gene
sequences of which the organism and his environment in conjunction are the
wider environment in which it acts, and which it manipulates. Thereby, the notion
of the gene as the basic unit of natural selection shall be defended.
In contrast to this paradigm of an adaptationist view, a developmental system
is introduced as a theoretical concept to comprise the conjunction of organismic
and environmental factors that accounts for the presence of certain phenotypic
traits within an organism or population, where environmental and non-genetic
organismic factors are considered as intrinsic to the development of the organism as genetic ones. On the one hand, an identical set of genes might be found in
clearly distinct phenotypes. For example first-generation worker ants of a newly
founded colony, one of whose tasks is to construct many of the standard features
of ant colonies, will look and behave differently from genetically identical later
generation specimen raised in the fully established colony, and hence in an environment that was shaped by those first generations (Gordon 2001). Similarly, the
sex of turtles and crocodiles is not genetically determined but depends on environmental temperature during embryonic development (Bateson 2001). On the other
hand, modification of environmental factors may affect the development of traits
that match with environmentally unmodified genetic variants, hence providing
for distinct developmental routes to a similar phenotype, as in the phenomenon of
“phenocopying” (Goldschmidt 1949).
Either way, the focus of inquiry has to be on the combined system, with environmental factors fully integrated but not necessarily interchangeable with genetic
ones, and with the key unit of analysis often not being the individual organism
but supra-individual entities. The very notion of one central unit of control in
development might be misguided to begin with. Even mechanisms of inheritance might be distributed over a variety of factors, including persistent structures in the environment. There is no such thing as genetic information that could
be taken by itself and still be informative about what phenotype an organism
will develop. Such would be the case only if “strong instructionism” were true,
that is if genetic information were supposed to fully specify phenotypic traits
(Wheeler and Clark 1999; 2008). Rather than being relegated to the status of
other externally induced changes in environmental conditions that work against
long-term stability, part of both the agency of change and the blame for suboptimality may lie with the organisms themselves.
The aspects of specificity of an environment to an organism and of the bi-directional
nature of the organism-environment dynamics are probably best integrated in an
approach that, among other strands of heterodox biological theorising, incorporates environmental and niche constructionism, and that has become known as
developmental systems theory (abbreviated DST and introduced by Susan Oyama
2000). Being a deliberate change of perspective on the animate realm rather than
a conventional predictive theory, as Oyama et al. (2001, 1f ) admit in the introduction to their developmental systems anthology, it reverses the direction of change
taken by Richard Dawkins (1999) in his “gene’s eye view”: Dawkins suggests a
perspective of inquiry under which the organism ultimately becomes “transparent” (1999, 4f, 250), so that what becomes visible instead are replicating gene
sequences of which the organism and his environment in conjunction are the
wider environment in which it acts, and which it manipulates. Thereby, the notion
of the gene as the basic unit of natural selection shall be defended.
In contrast to this paradigm of an adaptationist view, a developmental system
is introduced as a theoretical concept to comprise the conjunction of organismic
and environmental factors that accounts for the presence of certain phenotypic
traits within an organism or population, where environmental and non-genetic
organismic factors are considered as intrinsic to the development of the organism as genetic ones. On the one hand, an identical set of genes might be found in
clearly distinct phenotypes. For example first-generation worker ants of a newly
founded colony, one of whose tasks is to construct many of the standard features
of ant colonies, will look and behave differently from genetically identical later
generation specimen raised in the fully established colony, and hence in an environment that was shaped by those first generations (Gordon 2001). Similarly, the
sex of turtles and crocodiles is not genetically determined but depends on environmental temperature during embryonic development (Bateson 2001). On the other
hand, modification of environmental factors may affect the development of traits
that match with environmentally unmodified genetic variants, hence providing
for distinct developmental routes to a similar phenotype, as in the phenomenon of
“phenocopying” (Goldschmidt 1949).
Either way, the focus of inquiry has to be on the combined system, with environmental factors fully integrated but not necessarily interchangeable with genetic
ones, and with the key unit of analysis often not being the individual organism
but supra-individual entities. The very notion of one central unit of control in
development might be misguided to begin with. Even mechanisms of inheritance might be distributed over a variety of factors, including persistent structures in the environment. There is no such thing as genetic information that could
be taken by itself and still be informative about what phenotype an organism
will develop. Such would be the case only if “strong instructionism” were true,
that is if genetic information were supposed to fully specify phenotypic traits
(Wheeler and Clark 1999; 2008). Rather than being relegated to the status of