Fundamental Concepts and Methods in Developmental Science: A Relational Perspective

The articles in this issue represent an advance towards the goal of articulating a coherent contemporary Developmental Science. Our commentary reflects on and elaborates each contribution. The articles demonstrate a commitment to the principles of the meta-theory of a scientific paradigm termed Relationism. After describing the ontological-epistemological assumptions of the relational model, we describe how these categories lead directly to a characterization of the organism and development that defines relational developmental systems. The categories and characterizations result in a relational vocabulary; we discuss features of each of the articles in the context of this vocabulary.