In June 1909, scientists and dignitaries from 167 different countries gathered in Cambridge to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. The event was one of the most magnificent commemorations in the annals of science. Delegates gathered within the cloisters of Cambridge University not only to honor the “hero” of evolution but also to reassess the underpinnings of Darwinism at a critical juncture. With the mechanism of natural selection (...) increasingly under attack, evolutionary theory was in disarray. Against this backdrop, biologists weighed the impact of several new developments—the rediscovery of Mendel’s laws of heredity, de Vriesian mutation theory, and the linkage of sex‐cell division to the mechanism of heredity. The 1909 Darwin celebration thus represents a significant watershed in the history of modern biology that allows historians to assess the status of evolution prior to the advent of the chromosome theory of genetics. (shrink)

Japanese agricultural scientist Toyama Kametaro's report about the Mendelian inheritance of silkworm cocoon color in Studies on the Hybridology of Insects (1906) spurred changes in Japanese silk production and thrust Toyama and his work into a scholarly exchange with American entomologist Vernon Kellogg. Toyama's work, based on research conducted in Japan and Siam, came under international scrutiny at a time when analyses of inheritance flourished after the "rediscovery" of Mendel's laws of heredity in 1900. The hybrid silkworm studies in Asia (...) attracted the attention of Kellogg, who was concerned with how experimental biology would be used to study the causes of natural selection. He challenged Toyama's conclusions that Mendelism alone could explain the inheritance patterns of silkworm characters such as cocoon color because they had been subject to hundreds of years of artificial selection, or breeding. This examination of the intersection of Japanese sericulture and American entomology probes how practical differences in scientific interests, societal responsibilities, and silkworm materiality were negotiated throughout the processes of legitimating Mendelian genetics on opposite sides of the Pacific. The ways in which Toyama and Kellogg assigned importance to certain silkworm properties show how conflicting intellectual orientations arose in studies of the same organism. Contestation about Mendelism took place not just on a theoretical level, but the debate was fashioned through each scientist's rationale about the categorization of silkworm breeds and races and what counted as "natural." This further mediated the acceptability of the silkworm not as an experimental organism, but as an appropriately "natural" insect with which to demonstrate laws of inheritance. All these shed light on the challenges that came along with the use of agricultural animals to convincingly articulate new biological principles. (shrink)

Japanese agricultural scientist Toyama Kametaro’s report about the Mendelian inheritance of silkworm cocoon color in Studies on the Hybridology of Insects spurred changes in Japanese silk production and thrust Toyama and his work into a scholarly exchange with American entomologist Vernon Kellogg. Toyama’s work, based on research conducted in Japan and Siam, came under international scrutiny at a time when analyses of inheritance flourished after the “rediscovery” of Mendel’s laws of heredity in 1900. The hybrid silkworm studies in Asia attracted (...) the attention of Kellogg, who was concerned with how experimental biology would be used to study the causes of natural selection. He challenged Toyama’s conclusions that Mendelism alone could explain the inheritance patterns of silkworm characters such as cocoon color because they had been subject to hundreds of years of artificial selection, or breeding. This examination of the intersection of Japanese sericulture and American entomology probes how practical differences in scientific interests, societal responsibilities, and silkworm materiality were negotiated throughout the processes of legitimating Mendelian genetics on opposite sides of the Pacific. The ways in which Toyama and Kellogg assigned importance to certain silkworm properties show how conflicting intellectual orientations arose in studies of the same organism. Contestation about Mendelism took place not just on a theoretical level, but the debate was fashioned through each scientist’s rationale about the categorization of silkworm breeds and races and what counted as “natural.” This further mediated the acceptability of the silkworm not as an experimental organism, but as an appropriately “natural” insect with which to demonstrate laws of inheritance. All these shed light on the challenges that came along with the use of agricultural animals to convincingly articulate new biological principles. (shrink)

William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist at Johns Hopkins University from 1876 until his death in 1908. Over the course of his career, Brooks staunchly defended Darwinism, arguing for the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary theory at a time when alternative theories, such as neo-Lamarckism, grew prominent in American biology. In his book The Law of Heredity, Brooks addressed problems raised by Darwin’s theory of pangenesis. In modifying and developing Darwin’s pangenesis, Brooks proposed a new theory of heredity (...) that sought to avoid the pitfalls of Darwin’s hypothesis. In so doing he strengthened Darwin’s theory of natural selection by undermining arguments for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In later attacks on neo-Lamarckism, Brooks consistently defended Darwin’s theory of natural selection on logical grounds, continued to challenge the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and argued that natural selection best explained a wide range of adaptations. Finally, he critiqued Galton’s statistical view of heredity and argued that Galton had resurrected an outmoded typological concept of species, one which Darwin and other naturalists had shown to be incorrect. Brooks’s ideas resemble the “biological species concept” of the twentieth century, as developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and others. The late-nineteenth century was not a period of total “eclipse” of Darwinism, as biologists and historians have hitherto seen it. Although the “Modern Synthesis” refers to the reconciliation of post-Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection, we might adjust our understanding of how the synthesis developed by seeing it as the culmination of a longer discussion that extends back to the late-nineteenth century. (shrink)