History of Biology

I argue that Binkley et al. use causal process tracing in conjunction with a natural trajectory experiment and two natural snapshot experiments in their re-examination of the Kaibab. This shows that Aldo Leopold may have been right about trophic cascade in the Kaibab in the 1920s, i.e., that there are good reasons to think that a loss of predators led to a deer irruption which decreased aspen recruitment. Using the different cause-finding practices in combination can strengthen causal inferences and mitigate (...) the shortcomings that each practice has. (shrink)

To approach the issue of the recent proposal of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) put forth by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Müller, I suggest to consider the EES as a metascientific view: a description of what’s new in how evolutionary biology is carried out, not only a description of recently learned aspects of evolution. Knowing ‘what is it to do research’ in evolutionary biology, today versus yesterday, can aid training, research and career choices, establishment of relationships and collaborations, decision of (...) funding and research policies, in order to make the field advance for the better. After reviewing the concepts associated to the EES proposal (categorized for convenience as mechanisms, measures, fields, perspectives and applications), I show their transience, and sketch out ongoing disagreements about the EES. Then I examine the deep difficulties, i.e., the enormity and complexity of the covered field, affecting the achievement of trusted metascientific views; the insufficiency of conceptual analysis to capture the substance of scientific research; the entanglement between empirical and metascientific concepts, between multiple chronologies, and between descriptive and normative intentions; and the ineliminable stakeholding of any reviewer involved in the reviewed field. I propose that disciplines such as scientometrics, ethnography, sociology, economics and history, combined with conceptual analysis, inspire a more rigorous approach to the evolutionary biology scientific community, more grounded and shared, confirming or transforming claims for ‘synthesis’ while preserving their maintenance goals. (shrink)

First, we will address the unnecessary link between symbio-studies and Gaia, asking for the historical and epistemological reasons why they become associated. In particular, we contend that the association is mediated by the common interest in large-scale physico-chemical and biochemical patterns, rather than by an emphasis on harmony, equilibrium, and cooperation (Visvader 1992). Second, we will ask what Gaia is in a metatheoretical sense: is it a scientific hypothesis, a theory, a metaphor, an inspired invention, or a resurgence of antiscientific (...) attitude? After examining some alternatives that show the importance of metatheorizing, we will define Gaia a ‘scientific narrative’, this being a technical term in a sketchy metatheory. Let us just say, for now, that by narrative we don’t mean fairytale or artistic fiction, but rather a way of telling the history of our planet. We are not going to answer the question whether or not we should ban Gaia from any scientific discourse, nor the question how symbio-students should deal with the traditional association of their field with Gaia. But we hope to frame the dilemma in which symbio-students and the scientific community at large are held in a better way than simply insisting on classic demarcations between science and non-science. (shrink)

The species of vitalism discussed here, to immediately rule out two possible misconceptions, is neither the feverish cosa mentale found in ruminations on ‘biopolitics’ and fascism – where it alternates quickly between being a form of evil and a form of resistance, with hardly any textual or conceptual material to discuss – nor the opaque, and less-known form in which it exists in the worlds of ‘Theory’ in the humanities, perhaps closely related to the cognate, ‘materiality’. Rather, vitalism here is (...) a malleable construct, often with a poisonous reputation, hovering in the realms of the philosophy of biology, the history of medicine, and the scientific background of the Radical Enlightenment. This is a more vital vitalism, or at least a more ‘biologistic’, ‘embodied’, medicalized vitalism. I first distinguish between what I would call ‘substantival’ and ‘functional’ forms of vitalism, as applied to the eighteenth century. Substantival vitalism presupposes the existence of something like a vital force which either plays a causal role in the natural world as studied by scientific means, or remains a kind of hovering, extra-causal entity. Functional vitalism tends to operate ‘post facto’, from the existence of living bodies to the desire to find explanatory models that will do justice to their uniquely ‘vital’ properties in a way that fully mechanistic models cannot. I discuss some representative figures of the Montpellier school as being functional rather than substantival vitalists. A second point concerns the reprisal of vitalism in ‘late modernity’; from Hans Driesch to Georges Canguilhem. I suggest that in addition to the substantival and functional varieties, we then encounter a third, more existential form of vitalism, articulated by Canguilhem, in which vitalism is a kind of attitude towards Life. All of this, I hope, argues for a form of vitalism which is neither tedious scientism nor dangerous political rhetoric of health and sickness; instead, a vitalism with its own discreet charm. (shrink)

We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘teleological’; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature exemplified by Newton and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings ultimately expressed in the concept of ‘organism’ – a purposive entity, or at least an entity possessed of functions. The beauty of this distinction is that it seems to make intuitive sense and to map onto historical and conceptual constellations in (...) medicine, physiology and the related natural -philosophical discussions on the status of the body versus that of the machine. In this presentation I argue that the distinction between mechanism and teleology is imprecise and flawed, on the basis of a series of examples: the presence of ‘functional’ or ‘purposive’ features even in Cartesian physiology; work such as that of Richard Lower’s on animal respiration; the fact that the model of the ‘body-machine’ is not at all a mechanistic reduction of organismic properties to basic physical properties but on the contrary a way of emphasizing the uniqueness of organic life; and the concept of ‘animal economy’ in vitalist medical theory, which I present as a kind of ‘teleo-mechanistic’ concept of organism – neither mechanical nor teleological. (shrink)

I praise Franklin's full descriptions of important and exemplary experiments, and wish that he had said more about why they are exemplary.

The immune system does not just fight pathogens but also engages in interactions with beneficial microbes and non-immune cells of the body to harmonize their behavior by means of cytokines, antibodies and effector cells (Dinarello, 2007; Moticka, 2015, pp. 217e226, 261e267). However, the importance of these “housekeeping” functions has not been fully appreciated (Cohen, 2000). In his new book Immunity: The Evolution of an Idea Alfred I. Tauber traces the history of fundamental ideas in immunology and refers to recent advances (...) in the field to overturn the notion that immunity is the ability of an autonomous organism to protect itself against pathogens. Indeed, as suggested by the author, the autonomy of the organism is illusive because individuals develop as holobionts: functionally integrated multispecies consortia (p. 98). Similarly, he suggests that pathogenicity also emerges from the lack of subordination of a microbe to social welfare of the holobiont rather than from context-independent properties of this organism (pp. 165, 181). Emphasizing the contextual character of the parasite and the host, Tauber redefines immunity as an active process of coordination of a cellular ecosystem, which allows this collective to navigate through challenges of the environment and to face demands of the communal living (pp. 10e16). From this point of view, the failure to modulate intercellular interactions by the immune system entails mitigating immunity and impairing resistance to infection and disease (pp. 103e104). Immunity is a groundbreaking work establishing a new framework for understanding the function and activity of the immune system. Its value also lies in the fact that it serves as an important stepping-stone towards an integrated philosophical, ecological and immunological study of our embedment in the microbial world. (shrink)

What kinds of norms constrain mechanistic discovery and explanation? In the mechanistic literature, the norms for good explanations are directly derived from answers to the metaphysical question of what explanations are. Prominent mechanistic accounts thus emphasize either ontic or epistemic norms. Still, mechanistic philosophers on both sides agree that there is no sharp distinction between the processes of discovery and explanation. Thus, it seems reasonable to expect that ontic and epistemic accounts of explanation will be accompanied by ontic and epistemic (...) accounts of discovery, respectively. As we will show here, however, recent discovery accounts implicitly rely on both ontic and epistemic norms to characterize the discovery process. In this paper, we develop an account that makes explicit that, and how, ontic and epistemic norms work together throughout the discovery process. By describing mechanism discovery as a process of pattern recognition we demonstrate that scientists have to develop epistemic activities to distinguish a pattern from its background. Furthermore, they have to determine which epistemic activities successfully describe how the pattern is implemented by identifying the pattern’s components. Our approach reveals that ontic and epistemic norms are equally important in mechanism discovery. (shrink)

Prosper Lucas (1808–1885) is a unique figure in the history of psychiatric genetics. A physician-alienist, he authored one of the most important books on human genetics in the mid-19th century cited frequently by Darwin: the 1,500 page treatise—Philosophical and Physiological Treatise on Natural Heredity (1847–1850). This book contained a novel theory of the nature of inheritance and a detailed review of the heredity of a range of human traits and disorders, including various forms of insanity. Lucas postulated four forms of (...) heredity (direct, crossed, indirect, and atavistic), supported the importance of hereditary factors in insanity, accepted the inheritance of acquired characteristics, considered it important to examine both ancestors and collateral relatives, and recognized that heredity could influence both primary insanity and insanity secondary to other medical conditions. He reviewed the then available literature on most major forms of insanity including separate sections on hallucinations and suicidal monomania. The literature consisted of case reports of unusual families with high concentrations of illness. Lucas advocated for the homogeneity of transmission of forms of illness in families but recognized that—just as the form of illness could evolve within individuals over time—it could change forms when transmitted between relatives. (shrink)

This article aims to compare notions of progress and evolution in the social theories of Freud and Spencer. It argues 1) that the two authors had similarly complex theories that contained mixed elements of positivism and teleology; 2) In its positivist elements, both authors made use of unified natural laws and, in its teleological aspect, they made use of notions of final cause in that progress and the evolution of civilization was understood as a linear path of progressive development with (...) an aim, 3) that that aim was both ethno- as well as - in Freud?s case in particular? self-centric and, finally, 4) that such understanding of natural law led to ethical commitments to the individual. (shrink)

There is at present uneasiness about the conceptual basis of genetics. The gene concept has become blurred and there are problems with the distinction between genotype and phenotype. In the present paper I go back to their role in the creation of modern genetics in the early twentieth century. The terms were introduced by the Danish botanist and geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen in his big textbook of 1909. Historical accounts usually concentrate on this book and his 1911 paper “The Genotype Conception (...) of Heredity.” His bean selection experiment of 1900–1903 is generally assumed to be the source of his genotype theory. The present paper examines the scientific context and meaning of this experiment, how it was received, and how the genotype theory became securely established by the early 1910s. I argue in conclusion that the genotype/phenotype distinction, which provides the empirical basis for Johannsen's gene, was scientifically well founded when introduced and still is. Keith Baverstock's criticism does not consider the force of the bean selection experiment at the time and as a paradigm for following investigations of heredity. (shrink)

There is at present uneasiness about the conceptual basis of genetics. The gene concept has become blurred and there are problems with the distinction between genotype and phenotype. In the present paper I go back to their role in the creation of modern genetics in the early twentieth century. The terms were introduced by the Danish botanist and geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen in his big textbook of 1909. Historical accounts usually concentrate on this book and his 1911 paper “The Genotype Conception (...) of Heredity.” His bean selection experiment of 1900–1903 is generally assumed to be the source of his genotype theory. The present paper examines the scientific context and meaning of this experiment, how it was received, and how the genotype theory became securely established by the early 1910s. I argue in conclusion that the genotype/phenotype distinction, which provides the empirical basis for Johannsen's gene, was scientifically well founded when introduced and still is. Keith Baverstock's criticism does not consider the force of the bean selection experiment at the time and as a paradigm for following investigations of heredity. (shrink)

Given Descartes’ metaphysical and natural-philosophic commitments, it is very difficult to theorize the pregnant human being as a human being under his system. Specifically, given (1) Descartes’ account of generation, (2) his commitment to mechanistic explanations where bodies are concerned, (3) his reliance on a subtle individuating principle for human (and animal) bodies, and (4) his metaphysics of human beings, which include minds, bodies, and mind-body unions, there is no available human substance or entity which may clearly be the subject (...) of pregnancy. The incompatibility of any of the three options found in (4) with (1), (2), or (3), together with other undesirable consequences should any be selected, results in what I call the pregnancy problem. The pregnancy problem (henceforth, PP) is a previously unconsidered problem for the Cartesian philosophy. Given PP, commitment(s) (1), (2), (3) or (4), or a combination of these, would have to be revised for Descartes’ system to avoid a variety of tensions; alternately, counterintuitive consequences may have to be accepted. Ironically, given Descartes’ interest in generation and medicine more generally, the Cartesian framework struggles to accommodate pregnancy in human beings. This may have implications for the systematicity and sex-neutrality of dualist metaphysics in general. (shrink)

Between the 1930s and the mid 1970s, it was commonly believed that in 1880 Karl Marx had proposed to dedicate to Charles Darwin a volume or translation of Capital but that Darwin had refused. The detail was often interpreted by scholars as having larger significance for the question of the relationship between Darwinian evolutionary biology and Marxist political economy. In 1973–4, two scholars working independently—Lewis Feuer, professor of sociology at Toronto, and Margaret Fay, a graduate student at Berkeley—determined simultaneously that (...) the traditional story of the proposed dedication was untrue, being based on a long-standing misinterpretation of the relevant correspondence. Between the two, and among several other scholars who became their respective allies, there developed a contest of authority and priority over the discovery. From 1975 to 1982, the controversy generated a considerable volume of spilled ink in both scholarly and popular publications. Drawing on previously unexamined archival resources, this article revisits the ‘case’ of the so-called ‘Darwin–Marx correspondence’ as an instance of the phenomenon of ‘multiple discovery’. A familiar occurrence in the natural sciences, multiple discovery is rarer in the humanities and social sciences. The present case of a priority dispute in the history of ideas followed patterns familiar from such disputes in the natural sciences, while also diverging from them in ways that shed light on the significance of disciplinary norms and research infrastructures. (shrink)

Many commentators have analyzed the Papal Encyclical on the care of the environment entitled “Laudato Si’” from various angles but relatively few have written on the philosophical presuppositions that inform the overall stance of the encyclical. It is becoming increasingly evident that, to appreciate the full impact of this work, we need to uncover its ontological and epistemological commitments. This paper makes a contribution in this neglected area by focusing on the nature of life. Two main points are explored: the (...) way all lifeforms depend on other lifeforms, implying that the biosphere often functions like one single unit of life, and the issue of the intrinsic value of each living thing. By situating the encyclical’s arguments within the history of ideas on the nature of life, the environment, and ecology, this research helps to better appreciate the originality of this document. (shrink)

Die Nähe der Philosophie Schopenhauers zu derjenigen Schellings wurden oft beschworen und bereits zu Schopenhauers Lebzeiten häufig – bis hin zum Plagiatsvorwurf gegen Schopenhauer – thematisiert. Besonders auffällig werden die Ähnlichkeiten, wenn man sich den Naturkonzeptionen beider Denker zuwendet: Beide Philosophen versuchen auf je eigene Weise die Natur als selbsttätig zu denken. Ausgehend von diesen Überlegungen werden im vorliegenden Band die Naturphilosophie Schellings und Naturmetaphysik Schopenhauers ausführlich vor dem Hintergrund einer in ihrer Selbsttätigkeit als prozessual gedachten Natur gegenübergestellt und diskutiert. (...) Dabei versteht sich diese Arbeit als systematisch-komparatistischer Beitrag zur Schelling- und Schopenhauer-Forschung, indem sie erstmals einen detaillierten Vergleich der Naturkonzeptionen anstellt und zugleich für eine prozessphilosophische Interpretation – sowohl der Naturphilosophien, als auch der gesamtphilosophischen Systeme argumentiert. (shrink)

The theoretical biology movement originating in Britain in the early 1930’s and the biosemiotics movement which took off in Europe in the 1980’s have much in common. They are both committed to replacing the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and they have both invoked theories of signs to this end. Yet, while there has been some mutual appreciation and influence, particularly in the cases of Howard Pattee, René Thom, Kalevi Kull, Anton Markoš and Stuart Kauffman, for the most part, these movements have developed (...) independently of each other. Focussing on morphogenesis understood as vegetative semiosis, in this paper I will argue that the ideas of these movements are commensurate. Furthermore, synthesising them would enable us to see life processes as proto-narratives. Doing so will involve synthesising biohermeneutics, Peircian biosemiotics with Waddington’s theoretical biology and Piagetian genetic structuralism, and this, I claim, would strengthen the challenge of these traditions to mainstream biology. At the same time, this should contribute to overcoming the opposition between the sciences and the humanities, developing a broader tradition of Schellingian thought which involves developing the humanities and then demanding of the physical and biological sciences that they are consistent with and can make intelligible the emergence of humans as conceived by the humanities. (shrink)

It has come to my attention that a number of formulations in the section “Disciplinary Landscape: Cytology and Genetics” of my article “Method as a Function of Disciplinary Landscape: C.D. Darlington and the History of Cytology 1925–1950,” Journal of the History of Biology, 39, 2006, pp. 165–197, do not provide due credit to a source. While Franz Schrader, “Three Quarter Centuries of Cytology,” Science 107 : 155–159, is cited in the article, his reminiscences and analysis of the historical development of (...) cytology provided a helpful historiographical context, as well as specific insights, for my article and should have been more fully acknowledged. (shrink)

"The author tells a history of the study of cancer-causing viruses from the early twentieth century to the development of an HPV vaccine for cervical cancer in 2006. He profiles the "cancer virus hunters" who made breakthroughs in tumor virology"--.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the process of photosynthesis was still a mystery: Plant scientists were able to measure what entered and left a plant, but little was known about the intermediate biochemical and biophysical processes that took place. This state of affairs started to change between the two world wars, when a number of young scientists in Europe and the United States, all of whom identified with the methods and goals of physicochemical biology, selected photosynthesis as (...) a topic of research. The protagonists had much in common: They had studied physics and chemistry (although not necessarily plant physiology) to a high level; they used physicochemical methods to study the basic processes of life; they believed these processes were the same, or very similar, in all life forms; and they were affiliated with institutions that fostered this kind of study. This set of cognitive, methodological, and material resources enabled these protagonists to transfer their knowledge of the concepts and techniques from microbiology and human biochemistry, for example, to the study of plant metabolism. These transfers of knowledge had a great influence on the way in which the biochemistry and biophysics of photosynthesis would be studied over the following decades. Through the use of four historical cases, this paper analyzes these knowledge transfers, as well as the investigative pathways that made them possible. (shrink)

The Rise of Chance in Evolutionary Theory: A Pompous Parade of Arithmetic explores a pivotal conceptual moment in the history of evolutionary theory: the development of its extensive reliance on a wide array of concepts of chance. It tells the history of a methodological and conceptual development that reshaped our approach to natural selection over a century, ranging from Darwin’s earliest notebooks in the 1830s to the early years of the Modern Synthesis in the 1930s. Far from being a “pompous (...) parade of arithmetic,” as one early critic argued, evolution transformed during this period to make these conceptual and technical tools indispensable. This book charts the role of chance in evolutionary theory from its beginnings to the earliest days of modern evolutionary theory, making it an ideal resource for evolutionary biologists, historians, philosophers, and researchers in science studies or biological statistics. (shrink)

One claim found in the received historiography of the biometrical school (comprised primarily of Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and W. F. R. Weldon) is that one of the biometricians' great flaws was their inability to look past their population-focused, statistical, gradualist understanding of evolutionary change – which led, in part, to their ignoring developments in cellular biology around 1900. I will argue, on the contrary, that the work of the biometricians was, from its earliest days, fundamentally concerned with connections between (...) statistical patterns of inheritance and the underlying cellular features that gave rise to them. Such work remained current with contemporary knowledge of chromosomes, cytology, and development; in this article, I explore the first case. The biometricians were thus well positioned to understand the relationship between the patterns of Mendelian inheritance and the statistical distributions with which they primarily occupied themselves. Ignorance of this connection, then, is not the reason why they rejected Mendelism. Further, both Galton and Weldon – though each in their own unique way – decided to turn to biological detail as a way to better justify the generality of their statistical approaches to heredity. Perhaps paradoxically, then, for these biometricians, detail offered an approach to theoretical generality. (shrink)

The idea of ‘reversion’ or ‘atavism’ has a peculiar history. For many authors in the latenineteenth and early-twentieth centuries – including Darwin, Galton, Pearson, Weismann, and Spencer, among others – reversion was one of the central phenomena which a theory of heredity ought to explain. By only a few decades later, however, Fisher and others could look back upon reversion as a historical curiosity, a non-problem, or even an impediment to clear theorizing. I explore various reasons that reversion might have (...) appeared to be a central problem for this first group of figures, focusing on their commitment to a variety of conceptual features of evolutionary theory; discuss why reversion might have then ceased to be an interesting phenomenon; and, finally, close with some more general thoughts about the death of scientific problems. (shrink)