These proceedings had their origin in a conference entitled 'Alternative
Life History Styles of Fishes and Other Organisms' which was held in
Grahamstown, South Africa, in June 1987. The idea for the conference
arose out of the fascination of an African ichthyologist/ecologist (MNB)
for the conceptual models of fish life-history styles which were being
developed by an ichthyologist/epigeneticist based in Canada but with
field experience in Europe, Asia and Africa (EKB). I had never been
fully convinced that the adaptationist arguments of the neo-Darwinians
ex- plained all ontogenetic and evolutionary phenomena, and found that
the novel approach to organism development and evolution which had been
adopted by Balon, as well as by others such as L0vtrup, was refreshing
and enlightening. Their perspectives, combined with the new ideas on
self-organisation and the link between nonequilibrium thermodynamics and
biology by Prigogine, Jantsch, Laszlo, Wicken, Weber and others, seemed
to suggest that new ways of interpreting old findings were now becoming
available. On delving into the literature I found that a variety of
zoologists were working in the field of alternative life-history styles
and autopoiesis, yet they seemed to be unaware of one another's work. We
decided that it was time for a meeting of minds. The aim of the
conference was to examine the way in which epigenesis (i. e.
