Contemporary developmental science is rooted in Baldwin's thinking. The general principle of persistent exploration of the environment with the result of creating novelty, which was the core of Baldwin's theoretical system, has since the 1960s become the guiding idea in genetics. This is exemplified by the bounded flexibility of the work of the genetic system. Baldwin's focus on development, based on the observation of his own children and extrapolated to his general theoretical scheme, is fully in line with where contemporary biological sciences are heading. Baldwin was trying to make sense of complex biological and social processes that only now have come into the limelight as biological sciences have re-emerged in psychology. In some sense it paralleled that of his friend Charles Sanders Peirce, whose semiotics became understood only a century later. James Mark Baldwin left a legacy that has yet to be fully examined, one with profound implications for science and the humanities.
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