As part of the 2009 Darwin celebrations, we have seen the emergence and widespread acceptance of a standard narrative of the history of evolutionary biology that construes a more or less direct line from Darwin to present-day evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo (Mayr 1982; Larson 2004; Carroll 2005; Zimmer 2006, 2009; Ruse and Travis 2009). It is a story of completions and syntheses that not only celebrates Darwin’s genius but also implies an implicit progression of ideas, with inclusion of new empirical facts and methodological approaches within the general framework of Darwinism leading to an increasingly more complete understanding of the evolutionary process. This narrative involves both scientific and public discourses. It can be found in textbooks of evolutionary biology and in popular accounts of evolution; it is also the basis the many efforts to construct a more inclusive evolutionary worldview.

But the standard narrative “From Darwin to Evo Devo” is also woefully incomplete as it leaves out several important traditions within the history of evolutionary biology (Laubichler and Maienschein 2007). These neglected traditions are not fringe ideas with no relevance to current understanding of evolutionary processes that can therefore be relegated to the dustbin of history. Quite the contrary. The ideas and approaches that are part of a complementary tradition – namely, to explain the evolution of organisms in reference to the developmental mechanisms that first generate phenotypes and phenotypic variation – have informed some of the most important current evolutionary biology research programs, those in developmental evolution (devo-evo) and synthetic experimental evolution (SEE) (Wagner, Chiu, et al. 2000; Davidson 2006; Davidson and Erwin 2006; Laubichler 2007; Erwin and Davidson 2009).