 Susan Oyama’s monograph The Ontogeny of Information (1985 [2000a]) critiques gene-based theories of development. She argues that genetic information for development is causally derivative, existing as such only in the context of an ongoing developmental process. That process, in all its contingency and historical specificity, is causally primary. Neither DNA nor environmental factors are causes of development outside the interactive context that makes features of the physical world an organism’s environment and induces patterns of gene activation within cells. Genetic information emerges from the interactions of heterogeneous, dispersed, developmental resources. Central to Oyama’s view is the