THE REBIRTH OF RATIONAL MORPHOLOGY - PROCESS STRUCTURALISMS PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY

This paper examines a new challenge to neo-Darwinism, a movement known as process structuralism. The process structuralist critique of neo-D arwinism holds 1) that there are general laws in biology and that biol ogists should search for these laws; 2) that there are general forms o f morphology and development and that biologists should attempt to unc over these forms; 3) that organisms are unified wholes that cannot be understood without adopting a holistic perspective; and 4) that no spe cial, causal primacy should be given to the genes in development and m orphology. This paper places process structuralism in its historical c ontext, examines the philosophical underpinnings of the movement, and discusses some of the evidence used to support its claims.