Erik L. Peterson, The Excluded Philosophy of Evo-Devo? Revisiting C.H. Waddington’s Failed Attempt to Embed Alfred North Whitehead’s “Organicism” in Evolutionary Biology

Though a prominent British developmental biologist in his day, a close friend of Theodosius Dobzhansky, and a frequent correspondent with Ernst Mayr, C.H. Waddington did not enter the ranks of “architect” of the Modern Synthesis. By the end of his career, in fact, he recognized that other biologists reacted to his work “as though they feel obscurely uneasy”; and that the best that some philosophers of biology could say of his work was that he was not “wholly orthodox” (Waddington 1975c, 11). In this essay, I take Waddington’s self-assessments at face value and explore three potential reasons why his work did not have more of a direct impact: Waddington’s explicit support for the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead; a lack of institutional support; and Waddington’s occasional marginalization from the core network of American neo-Darwinians. Though excluded from the Modern Synthesis in the mid-20th century, it now appears that Waddington’s work does undergird the emerging evo-devo synthesis. Whether this indicates concomitant, if implicit, support for Whiteheadian philosophy is an interesting question not explored here.

evolution, neoDarwinism, evo-devo, experimental embryology, C.H. Waddington, Alfred North Whitehead, processualism, development, organicism, Joseph Needham, Joseph H. Woodger, Cambridge University, University of Edinburgh