Abstract

A philosophical embryology should have three concerns: first, it should describe the realities discovered by embryology and developmental biology ata higher level of generality than is achieved by those disciplines, and it should integrate this more general representation with philosophy’s other more generalconcepts. Second, it should answer philosophical questions raised by the study of embryological development if, as I believe, there are some. And third, it mustbe prepared to engage in a philosophical dialectic with those whose general representations work with a different set of concepts, or who answer philosophicalquestions differently, or who dispute the boundaries between the scientific and the philosophical. In this essay, I identify a number of questions that belong to thedomain I am identifying as “philosophical embryology,” and discuss the answers I think are indicated by sound philosophy and biology.