Cuvierian Functionalism

Abstract

The rise of evolutionary-developmental biology (evo-devo) is often claimed to mark the return of typological and/or structuralist thinking to evolutionary biology.Proponents of such claims point to evo-devo's emphasis on the deep conservation of animal body plans.Deep conservation requires long-term evolutionary stasis, which is difficult to explain in a Darwinian functionalist framework.Evo-devo biologists must therefore rely on other argumentative strategies to explain deep conservation.I argue, however, that their explanations are not typological or structuralist.Rather, they are Cuvierian functionalist: they recapitulate, in modified form, an argument developed by Georges Cuvier in the nineteenth century.Cuvierian functionalism is distinct from but complementary to Darwinian functionalism.Moreover, Cuvierian functionalism is immune to the traditional objections to typological thinking.

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