Delete comment from: Sandwalk
Hi John
Not at all!!! Structuralist never written for example that human beings were bound to appear. The only point is that biological morphogenesis obeys some rules that make biological forms partly predictable on the basis of theoretical models of morphogenesis including physical principles. That’s all. If it were not the case (a purely contingent evolution OF FORMS as in the neodarwinian framework), theoretical biology would not exist and the papers cited in a previous post would have never been written! That’s all. You should read Goodwin (among many other authors), for example:
"The contrasting emphases between evolutionary narratives and ontogenetic principle described above, and the evidence that continues to support both, calls for a resolution that depends not upon assimilation but upon an expanded conceptual framework within which both history (contingent lineages) and structure (intrinsic order) can be accommodated. A context for such an accommodation is a dynamics of complex processes which allows the study of both emergent evolutionary order and the role of contingencies on this emergence. The dynamics is the generative mechanisms of biological form (morphogenesis) and identification of the type of morphology that can arise, combined with the contingencies of genome modification and the effects of natural selection on the stability and transformation of the dynamic forms (the life cycles of different species). Such a conceptualisation of evolution might allow the two traditions of biology, involving both form and transformation, structure and process, to be reunited”.
Goodwin, B. C. (2000). The life of form. Emergent patterns of morphological transformation. Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences-Series III-Sciences de la Vie, 323(1), 15-21.
Mar 5, 2016, 5:03:09 PM
Posted to What is "structuralism"?