The study of micro-organisms in Britain in the early twentieth century was dominated by medical concerns, with little support for non-medical research. This paper examines the way in which microbes came to have a place in industrial contexts in the 1920s and early 1930s. Their industrial capacity was only properly recognized during World War I, with the development of fermentation processes to make required organic chemicals. Post-war research sponsored by chemical and food industries and the D.S.I.R. established the industrial significance (...) of microbes. The primary focus here is the D.S.I.R. work which aimed to pull microbes away from medical concerns and promote the role of microbes in British industry. (shrink)

Professor Ruse has been a philosopher of biology for twenty years, so he tells us in both the introduction and conclusion to this new 'handbook to the philosophy of biology'. In that time he has come to occupy a commanding position at the centre of the discipline, not least through his new journal Biology and Philosophy; this book serves primarily to reinforce that position. Eight of the ten chapters are concerned with evolutionary biology, broadly conceived to include aspects of molecular (...) biology and sociobiology (but not ecology). (shrink)