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  1. The Experimental Study of Bacterial Evolution and Its Implications for the Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary Biology.Maureen A. O’Malley - 2018 - Journal of the History of Biology 51 (2):319-354.
    Since the 1940s, microbiologists, biochemists and population geneticists have experimented with the genetic mechanisms of microorganisms in order to investigate evolutionary processes. These evolutionary studies of bacteria and other microorganisms gained some recognition from the standard-bearers of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, especially Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ledyard Stebbins. A further period of post-synthesis bacterial evolutionary research occurred between the 1950s and 1980s. These experimental analyses focused on the evolution of population and genetic structure, the adaptive gain of new functions, (...)
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  • Threads that Guide or Ties that Bind: William Kirby and the Essentialism Story.Charissa S. Varma - 2009 - Journal of the History of Biology 42 (1):119-149.
    Nineteenth-century British entomologist William Kirby is best known for his generic division of bees based on tongues and his vigorous defence of natural theology. Focusing on these aspects of Kirby's work has lead many current scholars to characterise Kirby as an "essentialist." As a result of this characterisation, many important aspects of his work, Monographia Apum Angliœ (1802) have been over-looked or misunderstood. Kirby's religious devotion, for example, have lead some scholars to assume Kirby used the term "type" for connecting (...)
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  • Stephen Jay Gould, Jack Sepkoski, and the ‘Quantitative Revolution’ in American Paleobiology.David Sepkoski - 2005 - Journal of the History of Biology 38 (2):209-237.
    During the 1970s, a "revolution" in American paleobiology took place. It came about in part because a group of mostly young, ambitious paleontologists adapted many of the quantitative methodologies and techniques developed in fields including biology and ecology over the previous several decades to their own discipline. Stephen Jay Gould, who was then just beginning his career, joined others in articulating a singular vision for transforming paleontology from an isolated and often ignored science to a "nomothetic discipline" that could sit (...)
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  • A Particular Synthesis: Aleksandr Promptov and Speciation in Birds. [REVIEW]Nikolai Krementsov - 2007 - Journal of the History of Biology 40 (4):637 - 682.
    During the 1930s, Aleksandr Promptov—a student of the founder of Russian population genetics Sergei Chetverikov—developed an elaborate concept of speciation in birds. He conducted field investigations aimed at giving a naturalistic content to the theoretical formulations and laboratory models of evolutionary processes advanced within the framework of population genetics, placing particular emphasis on the evolutionary role of bird behavior. Yet, although highly synthetic in combining biogeographical, taxonomic, genetic, ecological, and behavioral studies, Promptov's speciation concept was ignored by the architects of (...)
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  • Booknotes.Michael Ruse - 1998 - Biology and Philosophy 13 (1):145-152.
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  • Woodger, positivism, and the evolutionary synthesis.Joe Cain - 2000 - Biology and Philosophy 15 (4):535-551.
    In Unifying Biology, Smocovitis offers a series of claimsregarding the relationship between key actors in the synthesisperiod of evolutionary studies and positivism, especially claimsentailing Joseph Henry Woodger and the Unity of Science Movement.This commentary examines Woodger''s possible relevance to key synthesis actors and challenges Smocovitis'' arguments for theexplanatory relevance of logical positivism, and positivism moregenerally, to synthesis history. Under scrutiny, these arguments areshort on evidence and subject to substantial conceptual confusion.Though plausible, Smocovitis'' minimal interpretation – that somegeneralised form of Comtean (...)
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  • The proximate/ultimate distinction in the multiple careers of Ernst Mayr.John Beatty - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (3):333-356.
    Ernst Mayr''s distinction between ultimate and proximate causes is justly considered a major contribution to philosophy of biology. But how did Mayr come to this philosophical distinction, and what role did it play in his earlier scientific work? I address these issues by dividing Mayr''s work into three careers or phases: 1) Mayr the naturalist/researcher, 2) Mayr the representative of and spokesman for evolutionary biology and systematics, and more recently 3) Mayr the historian and philosopher of biology. If we want (...)
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  • Synthesising arguments and the extended evolutionary synthesis.Andrew Buskell - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 80 (C):101244.
    Synthesising arguments motivate changes to the conceptual tools, theoretical structure, and evaluatory framework employed in a given scientific domain. Recently, a broad coalition of researchers has put forward a synthesising argument in favour of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (‘EES’). Often this synthesising argument is evaluated using a virtue-based approach, which construes the EES as a wholesale alternative to prevailing practice. Here I argue this virtue-based approach is not fit for purpose. Taking the central concept of niche construction as a case (...)
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  • The Modern Synthesis: Theoretical or Institutional Event?Jean Gayon & Philippe Huneman - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):519-535.
    This paper surveys questions about the nature of the Modern Synthesis as a historical event : was it rather theoretical than institutional? When and where did it actually happen? Who was involved? It argues that all answers to these questions are interrelated, and that systematic sets of answers define specific perspectives on the Modern Synthesis that are all complementary.
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  • “A temporary oversimplification”: Mayr, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and the origins of the typology/population dichotomy (part 1 of 2). [REVIEW]Joeri Witteveen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 54 (C):96-105.
    The dichotomy between ‘typological thinking’ and ‘population thinking’ features in a range of debates in contemporary and historical biology. The origins of this dichotomy are often traced to Ernst Mayr, who is said to have coined it in the 1950s as a rhetorical device that could be used to shield the Modern Synthesis from attacks by the opponents of population biology. In this two-part essay I argue that the origins of the typology/population dichotomy are considerably more complicated and more interesting (...)
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  • The Ibis: Transformations in a Twentieth Century British Natural History Journal.Kristin Johnson - 2004 - Journal of the History of Biology 37 (3):515-555.
    The contents of the British Ornithologists' Union's journal, "The Ibis," during the first half of the 20th century illustrates some of the transformations that have taken place in the naturalist tradition. Although later generations of ornithologists described these changes as logical and progressive, their historical narratives had more to do with legitimizing the infiltration of the priorities of evolutionary theory, ecology, and ethology than analyzing the legacy of the naturalist tradition on its own terms. Despite ornithologists' claim that the journal's (...)
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  • The Unfinished Synthesis?: Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology in the 20th Century.David Sepkoski - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):687-703.
    In the received view of the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, paleontology was given a prominent role in evolutionary biology thanks to the significant influence of paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson on both the institutional and conceptual development of the Synthesis. Simpson's 1944 Tempo and Mode in Evolution is considered a classic of Synthesis-era biology, and Simpson often remarked on the influence of other major Synthesis figures – such as Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky – on his developing thought. Why, (...)
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  • What was really synthesized during the evolutionary synthesis? A historiographic proposal.Richard G. Delisle - 2011 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1):50-59.
    The 1920-1960 period saw the creation of the conditions for a unification of disciplines in the area of evolutionary biology under a limited number of theoretical prescriptions: the evolutionary synthesis. Whereas the sociological dimension of this synthesis was fairly successful, it was surprisingly loose when it came to the interpretation of the evolutionary mechanisms per se, and completely lacking at the level of the foundational epistemological and metaphysical commitments. Key figures such as Huxley, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and Rensch only paid lip (...)
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  • Epistemic and community transition in American evolutionary studies: the ‘Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics’ (1942–1949). [REVIEW]Joe Cain - 2002 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2):283-313.
    The Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics (United States National Research Council) marks part of a critical transition in American evolutionary studies. Launched in 1942 to facilitate cross-training between genetics and paleontology, the Committee was also designed to amplify paleontologist voices in modern studies of evolutionary processes. During coincidental absences of founders George Gaylord Simpson and Theodosius Dobzhansky, an opportunistic Ernst Mayr moved into the project's leadership. Mayr used the opportunity for programmatic reforms he had been pursuing (...)
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  • Synthesizing disciplinary narratives: George gaylord Simpson's tempo and mode in evolution.Debra Journet - 1995 - Social Epistemology 9 (2):113 – 150.
    (1995). Synthesizing disciplinary narratives: George Gaylord Simpson's tempo and mode in evolution. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 113-150.
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  • Speciation Post Synthesis: 1960–2000.Anya Plutynski - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):569-596.
    Speciation—the origin of new species—has been one of the most active areas of research in evolutionary biology, both during, and since the Modern Synthesis. While the Modern Synthesis certainly shaped research on speciation in significant ways, providing a core framework, and set of categories and methods to work with, the history of work on speciation since the mid-twentieth century is a history of divergence and diversification. This piece traces this divergence, through both theoretical advances, and empirical insights into how different (...)
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  • The architects of the evolutionary synthesis in national socialist germany: Science and politics. [REVIEW]Thomas Junker & Uwe Hoßfeld - 2002 - Biology and Philosophy 17 (2):223-249.
    The Synthetic Theory of Evolution (SyntheticDarwinism) was forged between 1925 and 1950.Several historians of science have pointed outthat this synthesis was a joint venture ofSoviet, German, American and Britishbiologists: A fascinating example of scientificcooperation, considering the fact that theevolutionary synthesis emerged during thedecades in which these countries were engagedin fierce political, military and ideologicalconflicts. The ideological background of itsAnglo-American representatives has beenanalyzed in the literature. We have examinedthe scientific work and ideological commitmentsof the German Darwinians during the ThirdReich. We based (...)
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  • Eclipsing the Eclipse?: A Neo-Darwinian Historiography Revisited.Max Meulendijks - 2021 - Journal of the History of Biology 54 (3):403-443.
    Julian Huxley’s eclipse of Darwinism narrative has cast a long shadow over the historiography of evolutionary theory around the turn of the nineteenth century. It has done so by limiting who could be thought of as Darwinian. Peter Bowler used the eclipse to draw attention to previously understudied alternatives to Darwinism, but maintained the same flaw. In his research on the Non-Darwinian Revolution, he extended this problematic element even further back in time. This paper explores how late nineteenth-century neo-Darwinian conceptualizations (...)
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  • Series of forms, visual techniques, and quantitative devices: ordering the world between the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Marco Tamborini - 2019 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 41 (4):1-20.
    In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...)
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  • “Genetic Load”: How the Architects of the Modern Synthesis Became Trapped in a Scientific Ideology.Alexandra Soulier - 2018 - Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science 4:118.
    The term “genetic load” first emerged in a paper written in 1950 by the geneticist H. Muller. It is a mathematical model based on biological, social, political and ethical arguments describing the dramatic accumulation of disadvantageous mutations in human populations that will occur in modern societies if eugenic measures are not taken. The model describes how the combined actions of medical and social progress will supposedly impede natural selection and make genes of inferior quality likely to spread across populations – (...)
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  • Theory, practice, and epistemology in the development of species concepts.David Magnus - 1996 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 27 (4):521-545.
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  • The uncertain foundation of neo-Darwinism: metaphysical and epistemological pluralism in the evolutionary synthesis.Richard G. Delisle - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2):119-132.
    The Evolutionary Synthesis is often seen as a unification process in evolutionary biology, one which provided this research area with a solid common theoretical foundation. As such, neo-Darwinism is believed to constitute from this time onward a single, coherent, and unified movement offering research guidelines for investigations. While this may be true if evolutionary biology is solely understood as centred around evolutionary mechanisms, an entirely different picture emerges once other aspects of the founding neo-Darwinists’ views are taken into consideration, aspects (...)
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (2):403-406.
    Of articles which are submitted for publication in Philosophy, a surprisingly large proportion are about the views of Richard Rorty. Some, indeed, we have published. They, along with pretty well all the articles we receive on Professor Rorty, are highly critical. On the perverse assumption that there must be something to be said for anyone who attracts widespread hostility, it is only right to see what can be said in favour of Rorty's latest collection of papers, entitled, Truth and Progress,.
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  • Ernst Mayr as community architect: Launching the society for the study of evolution and the journalevolution. [REVIEW]Joseph Cain - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (3):387-427.
    Ernst Mayr''s contributions to 20th century biology extend far beyond his defense of certain elements in evolutionary theory. At the center of mid-century efforts in American evolutionary studies to build large research communities, Mayr spearheaded campaigns to create a Society for the Study of Evolution and a dedicated journal,Evolution, in 1946. Begun to offset the prominence ofDrosophila biology and evolutionary genetics, these campaigns changed course repeatedly, as impediments appeared, tactics shifted, and compromises built a growing coalition of support. Preserved, however, (...)
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  • The costs of being a restless intellect: Julian Huxley's popular and scientific career in the 1920s.Steindór J. Erlingsson - 2009 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (2):101-108.
    Julian Huxley’s contribution to twentieth-century biology and science popularisation is well documented. What has not been appreciated so far is that despite Huxley’s eminence as a public scientific figure and the part that he played in the rise of experimental zoology in Britain in the 1920s, his own research was often heavily criticised in this period by his colleagues. This resulted in numerous difficulties in getting his scientific research published in the early 1920s. At this time, Huxley started his popular (...)
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  • How the Modern Synthesis Came to Ecology.Philippe Huneman - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):635-686.
    Ecology in principle is tied to evolution, since communities and ecosystems result from evolution and ecological conditions determine fitness values. Yet the two disciplines of evolution and ecology were not unified in the twentieth-century. The architects of the Modern Synthesis, and especially Julian Huxley, constantly pushed for such integration, but the major ideas of the Synthesis—namely, the privileged role of selection and the key role of gene frequencies in evolution—did not directly or immediately translate into ecological science. In this paper (...)
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  • Special Issue Editor’s Introduction: “Revisiting the Modern Synthesis”.Philippe Huneman - 2019 - Journal of the History of Biology 52 (4):509-518.
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  • Trading in Birds: Imperial Power, National Pride, and the Place of Nature in U.S.–Colombia Relations.Camilo Quintero - 2011 - Isis 102 (3):421-445.
    ABSTRACT Between the 1910s and the 1940s, American naturalists carried out a number of ornithological expeditions in Colombia. With the help of Colombian naturalists, thousands of skins were brought to natural history museums in the United States. By 1948 these birds had become an important treasure: American ornithologists declared Colombia the nation with the most bird species. This story sheds new light on the role science played in the expansion of U.S. political, economic, and cultural influence in Latin America in (...)
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  • Biology, Geology, or Neither, or Both: Vertebrate Paleontology at the University of Chicago, 1892–1950.Ronald Rainger - 1993 - Perspectives on Science 1 (3):478-519.
    Vertebrate paleontology was not readily incorporated into interdisciplinary activities at the University of Chicago. During the university’s first forty years serious disputes arose over the subject’s parameters and departmental affiliation. Only after World War II did a cooperative, interdisciplinary program emerge. Changes in biology and geology influenced that development, but even more important were local research and educational initiatives that provided the impetus and resources to create an innovative program.
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  • Ernst Mayr, naturalist: His contributions to systematics and evolution. [REVIEW]Walter J. Bock - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (3):267-327.
    Ernst Mayr''s scientific career continues strongly 70 years after he published his first scientific paper in 1923. He is primarily a naturalist and ornithologist which has influenced his basic approach in science and later in philosophy and history of science. Mayr studied at the Natural History Museum in Berlin with Professor E. Stresemann, a leader in the most progressive school of avian systematics of the time. The contracts gained through Stresemann were central to Mayr''s participation in a three year expedition (...)
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (3):429-435.
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  • “A temporary oversimplification”: Mayr, Simpson, Dobzhansky, and the origins of the typology/population dichotomy. [REVIEW]Joeri Witteveen - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 55 (C):20-33.
    The dichotomy between ‘typological thinking’ and ‘population thinking’ features in a range of debates in contemporary and historical biology. The origins of this dichotomy are often traced to Ernst Mayr, who is said to have coined it in the 1950s as a rhetorical device that could be used to shield the Modern Synthesis from attacks by the opponents of population biology. In this two-part essay, I argue that the origins of the typology/population dichotomy are considerably more complicated and more interesting (...)
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1993 - Biology and Philosophy 8 (1):403-406.
    There is a rather striking video currently used in police training. A firearms officer is caught on video shooting an armed suspect. The officer then gives his account of what happened, and there is no suggestion that he is tying to fabricate evidence. He says that he shot the suspect once; his partner says that he fired two shots. On the video we see four shots being deliberately fired. Memory, it seems, is an unreliable witness in situations of stress.
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  • Organic form and evolution: the morphological problem in twentieth-century italian biology.Marco Tamborini - 2022 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 44 (4):1-17.
    This paper examines the efforts in evolution research to understand form’s structure that developed in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, it analyzes how the organic approach in biology and the study of organic form merged in the morphological research agendas of Giuseppe Colosi and Giuseppe Levi. These biologists sought to understand form’s inner composition and structure. First, I will briefly outline the morphological practices and frameworks used to study form changes and structures in the (...)
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  • The Art of Authority: Exhibits, Exhibit-Makers, and the Contest for Scientific Status in the American Museum of Natural History, 1920–1940.Victoria Cain - 2011 - Science in Context 24 (2):215-238.
    ArgumentIn the 1920s and 1930s, the growing importance of habitat dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History forced staff members to reconsider what counted as scientific practice and knowledge. Exhibit-makers pressed for more scientific authority, citing their extensive and direct observations of nature in the field. The museum's curators, concerned about their own eroding status, dismissed this bid for authority, declaring that older traditions of lay observation were no longer legitimate. By the 1940s, changes inside and outside the museum (...)
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (1):121-125.
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (2):253-259.
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1989 - Biology and Philosophy 4 (4):403-406.
    Of articles which are submitted for publication in Philosophy, a surprisingly large proportion are about the views of Richard Rorty. Some, indeed, we have published. They, along with pretty well all the articles we receive on Professor Rorty, are highly critical. On the perverse assumption that there must be something to be said for anyone who attracts widespread hostility, it is only right to see what can be said in favour of Rorty's latest collection of papers, entitled, Truth and Progress,.
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  • Booknotes.R. M. - 1994 - Biology and Philosophy 9 (4):507-514.
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  • Genera, evolution, and botanists in 1940: Edgar Anderson's “Survey of Modern Opinion”.Kim Kleinman - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 67:1-7.
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  • A rhetoric of interdisciplinary scientific discourse: Textual criticism of Dobzhansky's genetics and the origin of species.Leah Ceccarelli - 1995 - Social Epistemology 9 (2):91 – 111.
    Abstract This paper is a close textual criticism of Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species. It argues that the book succeeds as interdisciplinary communication by promoting polysemy. The professional goals of two scientific communities are embedded in the text in such a way that each audience reads the call for co?operative action as implicit support for their own methods.
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