The Historiography of Embryology and Developmental Biology

Abstract

Embryology is the science of studying how embryos undergo change over time as they grow and differentiate. The unit of study is the unfolding organism, and the timeline upon which embryology is focused is brief compared to the life cycle of the organism. Developmental biology is the science of studying development, which includes all of the processes that are required go from a single celled embryo to an adult. While embryos undergo development, so to do later stages of organisms. Thus, development is broader than embryology, and it focuses on the processes more than on the entities being developed. The fields overlap, and in some senses embryology gave way to developmental biology as new techniques and new questions, in particular genetic analyses and methods, allowed researchers to “see” more inside of organisms and manipulate the processes that are required for their unfolding. This article examines the ways in which developmental biology manifested from embryology, while also retaining aspects of the scientific goals and approaches of the earlier field of embryology. It also looks at the ways in which the study of both embryos and their processes of development have intersected with evolution, both in the nineteenth century and throughout the late-20th century emergence of the field of evolutionary developmental biology.