Editor’s Comments to Gilbert

Abstract

Gilbert traces the developing embryo as Self, first through a historical analysis of our understanding of induction, and then places the issue of embryonic induction in its evolutionary context. “Ontogeny doesn’t recapitulate phylogeny, it creates it” (Garstang). How differences in induction generate different “selves” has been made clearer by recent advances in our understanding of regulatory principles in so called positive and negative induction, correlative development, phyletic constraints, and transfer of competence, each of which is clearly elucidated by Gilbert. He then turns to placing the scientific question within the broader conceptual construction that has served as an implicit theme of these essays, i.e, the dialecticism of such processes. Noting that the concept of induction has readily been acknowledged as explicitly dialectical by 20th century investigators, Gilbert well-illustrates Waddington’s intellectual debt to Whitehead in this regard. This example offers an excellent case of metaphysical awareness enriching the scientific enterprise, and more saliently, it captures an essential ephemeral component of our understanding of the Self from the vantage of developmental biology. Here we might review earlier antecedents for a clue regarding the elusiveness of our subject.