During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. (...) Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur. (shrink)

During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. (...) Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur. (shrink)

Synthetic biology is the engineering view on biotechnology that ultimately aims at fulfilling the quest of building an artificial cell. From the very first attempts of synthesizing life, this subject has made an impact on the media through, very often, misleading headlines and news. We review here the historical journalistic approach on synthetic biology and related disciplines, from the early twentieth century to the lastest achievements on designing protocells or genome reduction. However, it would be very naive to consider the (...) research community and the media to be unidirectionally linked, with the latter being mere displayers of the research “reality”. On the contrary, the research community has also received a strong influence from the media, as evidenced by statements from researchers, common metaphors and, even, a trend to unconsciously develop shared techno-social paradigms. We conclude that, beyond overstatements from researchers and journalists’ misunderstandings, both communities provide strong feedback to each other and, together, contribute to define the dream that synthetic biologists are aiming for. (shrink)