Setting the Stage for Evolutionary Theory

In developing his theory of evolution, Charles Darwin turned to earlier French ideas, including transformism and Cuvier’s adapted organism. Nonetheless, the adaptationist thesis developed by Darwin rejects formalist aspects of early French biology. It has been proposed that Darwin’s theory was even more anti-Cuverian than anti-Lamarckian, since Georges Cuvier’s adapted organism contradicted any notion of continuous change over time. On the other hand, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s unity of composition was consistent with homological relations between life forms emphasised by Richard Owen and others. In Darwin’s hands, homology was now accounted for by historical descent and adaptation by the incremental changes of ‘parts’ according to functional need. These parts were defined as genes under the modern synthesis. Current biology remains firmly based on reductionist premises. Systems biology, while endorsing an emergent holism, remains wedded to the Central Dogma of molecular biology, in that DNA and its code are viewed as the ultimate determinants of living processes. The premise underlying the life sciences is an atomistic one, based on the adaptation of parts to external conditions. Structuralist biology, on the contrary, emphasises the unity of the organism and systemic properties where the ‘whole’ has a regulatory role over its ‘parts’.