How a Landscape Metaphor Became a Way to Picture How Life Unfolds

By the middle of the 20th century, it had begun to seem that biology was almost solved. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection explained how organisms change and adapt; the modern science of genetics showed how it works at the molecular scale. Genes governing traits get passed from parent to offspring, and random mutations create the variations that selection acts on. The landscape metaphor is a way of picturing that: the same image used to describe how form unfolds, rather than a claim that the work is finished. Quanta Magazine reports the metaphor has come into its own — meaning it is being used to organize questions about development and change that the gene-plus-selection picture alone doesn't answer.