 There has been constant criticism of the proximate-ultimate distinction (since even before Mayr 1961), and against its underlying idea to downgrade the explanatory or causal relevance of development to evolution. More recently, the discussion of this issue gained pace through new findings in fields such as epigenetics, evo-devo and niche construction theory (Thierry 2005; Laland et al. 2011, 2013a, 2013b; Haig 2011, 2013; Scott-Phillips et al. 2011; Dickins &amp; Rahman 2012; Guerrero-Bosagna 2012; Calcott 2013; Dickins &amp; Barton 2013; Gardner 2013; Mesoudi et al. 2013; Martínez &amp; Esposito 2014; Scholl &amp; Pigliucci 2015; Baedke 2018; Uller &amp; Laland 2019). In this context, some scholars argue that the proximate-ultimate distinction stands “at the center of some of contemporary biology’s fiercest debates” (Laland et al. 2011: 1512) about the role of developmental plasticity, niche construction and inclusive inheritance for evolutionary trajectories. Participants in this debate have argued that we should, due to different epistemic or heuristic reasons, keep Mayr’s proximate-ultimate distinction (Scott-Phillips et al. 2011; Dickins &amp; Barton 2013) or a revised or reinterpreted form of it (Scholl &amp; Pigliucci 2015; Otsuka 2015), expand it by a third intermediate form of explanations (Haig 2013), or replace it with a concept of ‘reciprocal causation’ (Laland et al. 2011, 2013a, 2013b, 2015; Mesoudi et al. 2013). In line with earlier philosophical work (Oyama 1985; Keller 2010; Griffiths &amp; Stotz 2013), the latter idea of reciprocal causation should allow describing the feedback processes between causal factors in evolving systems. This includes organisms’ capacity of phenotypic plasticity or, more specifically, their activities to alter selection pressures. Paradigmatic feedback cases are niche construction behaviors of organisms that modify their environments and thus shape natural selection pressures working on them. In other words, reciprocal causation holds that organisms are not only effects of adaptive processes, but also causal starting points of evolutionary trajectories. In this sense this framework argues against the causal and/or explanatory asymmetry claim of the proximate-ultimate distinction. It highlights the important role of development for evolution.