Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
This month's biannual meeting of the general assembly of UNESCO at Sofia is not the make-or-break meeting it might have been, but a sign to reluctant members that they had best stay in.
The molecular biology of the process of development has been enlivened, in the past few years, by several novel clues. But there is still a long way to go.
Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance was first published in 1982 to widespread acclaim. Three years later, on the appearance of the paperback edition*, W.F. Bynum reassesses the book.