This work provides a unique global overview of the logical structure of the genomically encoded regulatory systems that control and shape all animal developmental process, and that determine the nature of evolutionary processes that affect body plan. Davidson and Peter unify and simplify the currently largely phenomenological descriptions of development and evolution by focusing on the causality in these processes. In a single volume this book provides a comprehensive way of thinking and learning about the genomic control of very diverse biological processes. It therefore functions as an explanatory framework rather than numerous small explanatory examples floating in an unorganized descriptive background. Conceptually organizes a constellation of complex and diverse biological phenomena Investigates fundamental developmental control system logic in diverse circumstances and expresses these in conceptual models Explores mechanistic evolutionary processes, illuminate the evolutionary consequences of developmental control systems as they are encoded in the genome