ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Embryo to Code: Visual Regimes and the Fate of Development in Evolutionary Biology

• In Event: Biology's 20th Century Evolution: From Genetics to AI

English Abstract

This talk examines the visual and epistemological transformation of evolutionary biology by tracing the shifting role of embryology from the 19th century to the present. In the nineteenth century, comparative embryology was not merely descriptive but functioned as a visual epistemology: a way of knowing in which images actively generated theory. Figures by Karl Ernst von Baer emphasized developmental divergence and species-specific trajectories, while Ernst Haeckel’s iconic embryo grids translated Darwinian descent into a powerful, if problematic, visual teleology. These images did not simply illustrate biology; they encoded cultural hierarchies of race, gender, and civilization under the guise of scientific neutrality.

By the mid-twentieth century, this processual, relational vision of development was displaced by the molecular paradigm. The rise of the Modern Synthesis and the dominance of genetics redefined evolution as a change in gene frequencies, marginalizing ontogeny as an epiphenomenon. The visual culture of biology shifted from layered depictions of morphogenesis to minimalist schematics—gene maps, flowcharts, and above all, the crystalline double helix—which embodied new epistemic virtues of precision, modularity, and control.

Yet recent developments in evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) and ecological Evo-Devo signal a revival of developmental thinking. These frameworks challenge genetic determinism and foreground symbiosis, plasticity, and environmental interaction. Importantly, they also call for new visual languages—time-lapse imaging, 3D morphogenetic models, and ecological interaction maps—that reassert the importance of form, contingency, and process.

By analyzing these historical and contemporary visual regimes, this talk argues that recovering embryology’s visual epistemology is essential for building a more relational, inclusive, and pluralistic evolutionary science.

Author

• Erica Torrens, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico