The Historical Context and Role of Riedl's Systems Theory of Evolution

In this article I am tracing the intellectual trajectory and historical context of Rupert Riedl's contributions to evolutionary theory, the book Order in Living Organisms (1978) and the accompanying article in the Quarterly Review of Biology (1977). These publications appeared at about the same time as Steven J. Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny as well as the "Spandrels" paper by Gould and Lewontin which initiated a major re-orientation of evolutionary biology. Riedl's work anticipated two major developments, the notion of developmental constraints in evolutionary developmental biology and the idea of evolvability. The factors that likely have limited the bibliometric impact of Riedl's work are also discussed.