Abstract
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.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank David Witherington for his helpful suggestions in the preparation of this article.