The Dutch microbiologist/biochemist Albert Jan Kluyver was an early proponent of the idea of biochemical unity, and how that concept might be demonstrated through the careful study of microbial life. The fundamental relatedness of living systems is an obvious correlate of the theory of evolution, and modern attempts to construct phylogenetic schemes support this relatedness through comparison of genomes. The approach of Kluyver and his scientific descendants predated the tools of modern molecular biology by decades. Kluyver himself is poorly recognized (...) today, yet his influence at the time was profound. Through lens of today however, it has been argued that the focus by Kluyver and others to create taxonomic and phylogenetic schemes using morphology and biochemistry distorted and hindered progress of the discipline of microbiology, because of a perception that the older approaches focused too much on a reductionist worldview. This essay argues that in contrast the careful characterization of fundamental microbial metabolism and physiology by Kluyver made many of the advances of the latter part of the twentieth century possible, by offering a framework which in many respects anticipated our current view of phylogeny, and by directly and indirectly training a generation of scientists who became leaders in the explosive growth of biotechnology. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper aims to understand the emergence of comparative anatomy in the eighteenth century in the Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences. As early as the 1670s, a program centered on animal anatomy was conceived, which was a first attempt to give some autonomy to studies on animals and to link anatomy with natural history, but it declined after 1690. However, a variety of studies on animals was published in theMémoiresof the Académie during the eighteenth century. We propose a descriptive typology (...) of them in order to explore the status of animals and the significance of anatomy in each type, and to determine, in particular, which elements of Perrault's program were passed on at the Académie throughout the century. We discuss the influence of this legacy on the development of comparative anatomy after 1750, especially in Daubenton's work. (shrink)

We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference (...) to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines. (shrink)

Claude Perrault, a founding member of the Académie des sciences and architect of the Louvre, is a figure emblematic of architecture’s transformation by the so-called scientific revolution, representing a radical break with tradition. This article will address Perrault’s scientific challenge to architecture as one that harks back to both ancient and modern sources. It explores some ways in which Perrault integrated the analogy between medicine and architecture into his approach to this art and assimilated medical concepts, particularly observation, into an (...) empirical medical approach. This notion of observation was at the heart of the practical aspect of ancient philosophy as a care of the soul which articulated the ancient comparison of the charismatic orator to a doctor. Thus, Perrault’s remarks on Vitruvius’s authority can be broadened beyond architecture to the quest for a guide to living, transcending disciplinary boundaries between natural science and art. Further, Perrault’s claims for naturalness in observation share a double perspective: observation as a new form of learned experience reflects the ethos of the scientist, while, as a traditional activity of peasants, it reflects a raw empirical knowledge about rules of life condensed into habit and custom, enabling common people to be the physicians of themselves. (shrink)

The comparative method, closely identified with Darwinian evolutionary biology, also has a long pre-Darwinian history. The method derives its scientific power from its ability to interpret comparative observations with reference to a theory of relatedness among the entities being compared. Such scientifically powerful strong comparison is distinguished from weak comparison, which lacks such theoretical grounding. This paper examines the history of the strong comparison permitted by the comparative method from the early modern period to the threshold of the Darwinian revolution (...) in the mid nineteenth century. It interprets the work of early pioneers such as Belon, Willis, Perrault, and Tyson from this methodological perspective, rather than focusing on their particular anatomical findings. Although these early writers made formative scientific contributions through their comparative investigations, the more theoretically grounded application of the comparative method by Geoffroy, Cuvier, and Owen was instrumental in laying the foundation for its later incorporation into Darwinian evolutionary theory. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes explains physiology in terms of whole systems, and not in terms of the size, shape and motion of tiny corpuscles (corpuscular mechanics). It is a standard, entrenched view that Descartes’ proper means of explanation in the natural world is through strict reduction to corpuscular mechanics. This view is bolstered by a handful of corpuscular–mechanical explanations in Descartes’ physics, which have been taken to be representative of his treatment of all natural phenomena. However, Descartes’ explanations of the (...) ‘principal parts’ of physiology do not follow the corpuscular–mechanical pattern. Des Chene has identified systems in Descartes’ account of physiology, but takes them ultimately to reduce down to the corpuscle level. I argue that they do not. Rather, Descartes maintains entire systems, with components selected from multiple levels of organization, in order to construct more complete explanations than corpuscular mechanics alone would allow. (shrink)