We argue that the mathematization of science should be understood as a normative activity of advocating for a particular methodology with its own criteria for evaluating good research. As a case study, we examine the mathematization of taxonomic classification in systematic biology. We show how mathematization is a normative activity by contrasting its distinctive features in numerical taxonomy in the 1960s with an earlier reform advocated by Ernst Mayr starting in the 1940s. Both Mayr and the numerical taxonomists sought to (...) formalize the work of classification, but Mayr introduced a qualitative formalism based on human judgment for determining the taxonomic rank of populations, while the numerical taxonomists introduced a quantitative formalism based on automated procedures for computing classifications. The key contrast between Mayr and the numerical taxonomists is how they conceptualized the temporal structure of the workflow of classification, specifically where they allowed meta-level discourse about difficulties in producing the classification. (shrink)

The twentieth century witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of statistics by biologists, including systematists. The modern synthesis and new systematics stimulated this development, particularly after World War II. The rise of "the statistical frame of mind " resulted in a rethinking of the relationship between biological and mathematical points of view, the roles of objectivity and subjectivity in systematic research, the implications of new computing technologies, and the place of systematics among the biological disciplines.

This essay explores the intersection of race science and plant taxonomy in the creation of evolutionary taxonomies (phylogenies) of populations of Zea mays, also known as maize or corn. Following recent work in the history and sociology of race, it analyzes maize taxonomy as technology. Through an analysis of successive attempts to classify diverse maize varieties, especially those originating in Mexico, it shows that taxonomy created possibilities for researchers to intervene in commercial agriculture, state development projects, biological conservation, and domestic (...) and international politics and policy. It further underscores that the modern science of maize taxonomy was distinct but never inseparable from assessments of maize’s human cultivators. Attending to particularities of this relationship is crucial, because it reveals the application of maize taxonomy as a technology for ordering human diversity and intervening in human lives, as well as managing the impressive diversity of Zea mays. (shrink)

The use of molecules and reactions as evidence, markers and/or traits for evolutionary processes has a history more than a century long. Molecules have been used in studies of intra-specific variation and studies of similarity among species that do not necessarily result in the analysis of phylogenetic relations. Promoters of the use of molecular data have sustained the need for quantification as the main argument to make use of them. Moreover, quantification has allowed intensive statistical analysis, as a condition and (...) a product of increasing automation. All of these analyses are subject to the methodological anxiety characteristic of a community in search of objectivity. It is in this context that scientists compared and evaluated protein and nucleic acid sequence data with other types of molecular data – including immunological, electrophoretic and hybridization data. This paper argues that by looking at long-term historical processes, such as the use of molecular evidence in evolutionary biology, we gain valuable insights into the history of science. In that sense, it accompanies a growing concern among historians for big-pictures of science that incorporate the fruitful historical research on local cases of the last decades. (shrink)

During the early 1960s, Morris Goodman used a variety of immunological tests to demonstrate the very close genetic relationships among humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Molecular anthropologists often point to this early research as a critical step in establishing their new specialty. Based on his molecular results, Goodman challenged the widely accepted taxonomie classification that separated humans from chimpanzees and gorillas in two separate families. His claim that chimpanzees and gorillas should join humans in family Hominidae sparked a well-known conflict with (...) George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and other prominent evolutionary biologists. Less well known, but equally significant, were a series of disagreements between Goodman and other prominent molecular evolutionists concerning both methodological and theoretical issues. These included qualitative versus quantitative data, the role of natural selection, rates of evolution, and the reality of molecular clocks. These controversies continued throughout Goodman's career, even as he moved from immunological techniques to protein and DNA sequence analysis. This episode highlights the diversity of methods used by molecular evolutionists and the conflicting conclusions drawn from the data that these methods generated. (shrink)

This is the story, told in the light of a new analysis of historical data, of a mathematical biology problem that was explored in the 1930s in Thomas Morgan’s laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. It is one of the early developments of evolutionary genetics and quantitative phylogeny, and deals with the identification and counting of chromosomal inversions in Drosophila species from comparisons of genetic maps. A re-analysis of the data produced in the 1930s using current mathematics and computational (...) technologies reveals how a team of biologists, with the help of a renowned mathematician and against their first intuition, came to an erroneous conclusion regarding the presence of phylogenetic signals in gene arrangements. This example illustrates two different aspects of a same piece: the appearance of a mathematical in biology problem solved with the development of a combinatorial algorithm, which was unusual at the time, and the role of errors in scientific activity. Also underlying is the possible influence of computational complexity in understanding the directions of research in biology. (shrink)

The Burgess Shale, a set of fossil beds containing the exquisitely preserved remains of marine invertebrate organisms from shortly after the Cambrian explosion, was discovered in 1909, and first brought to widespread popular attention by Stephen Jay Gould in his 1989 bestseller Wonderful life: The Burgess Shale and the nature of history. Gould contrasted the initial interpretation of these fossils, in which they were ‘shoehorned’ into modern groups, with the first major reexamination begun in the 1960s, when the creatures were (...) perceived as ‘weird wonders’, possessing unique body plans and unrelated to modern organisms. More recently, a third phase of Burgess Shale studies has arisen, which has not yet been historically examined. This third phase represents a revolutionary new understanding, brought about, I believe, by a change in taxonomic methodology that led to a new perception of the Burgess creatures, and a new way to comprehend their relationships with modern organisms. The adoption of cladistics, and its corollary, the stem group concept, has forged a new understanding of the Burgess Shale … but has it also changed the questions we are allowed to ask about evolution? (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century calls to modernize natural history motivated a range of responses. It was unclear how research in natural history museums would participate in the significant technological and conceptual changes that were occurring in the life sciences. By the 1960s, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, was among the few university-based natural history museums that were able to maintain their specimen collections and support active research. The MVZ therefore provides a window to the (...) modernization of natural history. This paper concentrates on the directorial transitions that occurred at the MVZ between 1965 and 1971. During this period, the MVZ had four directors: Alden H. Miller (Director 1940–1965), an ornithologist; Aldo Starker Leopold (Acting Director 1965–1966), a conservationist and wildlife biologist; Oliver P. Pearson (Director 1966–1971), a physiologist and mammalogist; and David B. Wake (Director 1971–1998), a morphologist, developmental biologist, and herpetologist. The paper explores how a diversity of overlapping modernization strategies, including hiring new faculty, building infrastructure to study live animals, establishing new kinds of collections, and building modern laboratories combined to maintain collections at the MVZ’s core. The paper examines the tensions between the different modernization strategies to inform an analysis of how and why some changes were institutionalized while others were short-lived. By exploring the modernization of collections-based research, this paper emphasizes the importance of collections in the transformation of the life sciences. (shrink)