The technique of nuclear transplantation – popularly known as cloning – has been integrated into several different histories of twentieth century biology. Historians and science scholars have situated nuclear transplantation within narratives of scientific practice, biotechnology, bioethics, biomedicine, and changing views of life. However, nuclear transplantation has never been the focus of analysis. In this article, I examine the development of nuclear transplantation techniques, focusing on the people, motivations, and institutions associated with the first successful nuclear transfer in metazoans in (...) 1952. The conflict between embryologists and geneticists over the mechanisms of differentiation motivated Robert Briggs to pursue nuclear transplantation experiments as a way to resolve the debate. Briggs worked at the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute, a research facility devoted to the study of cancer. The goal of understanding cancer would play a role in the development of the technique, and the story of nuclear transplantation sheds light on the role that biomedical contexts play in biological research in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper takes an integrated history and philosophy of science approach to the topic of "simplicity out of complexity". The reflex theory was a framework within early twentieth century psychology and neuroscience which aimed to decompose complex behaviours and neural responses into simple reflexes. It was controversial in its time, and did not live up to its own theoretical and empirical ambitions. Examination of this episode poses important questions about the limitations of simplifying strategies, and the relationship between simplification and (...) the engineering approach to biology. (shrink)

While behaviourist psychology had proven its worth to the US military during the Second World War, the 1950s saw behaviourism increasingly associated with a Cold War discourse of ‘totalitarianism’. This article considers the argument made in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism on totalitarianism as a form of behaviourist control. By connecting Arendt’s Cold War anti-behaviourism both to its discursive antecedents in a Progressive-era critique of industrial labour, and to contemporaneous attacks on behaviourism, this paper aims to answer two interlocking (...) questions: Why was behaviourism overtaken by cognitivism as the dominant theoretical orientation of psychologists in the 1960s, and what role did the concept of language play in this shift? (shrink)

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 (...) positivism had a role in synthesishistory – requires more of an evidential basis and must engageexisting scholarship on epistemic reforms in the biological sciencesprior to the synthesis period. Smocovitis is right to investigateepistemology in the synthesis period of evolutionary studies and tolook for links to wider changes in science and philosophy. However,in its present form, Unifying Biology fails to support herbasic interpretation. (shrink)

In the most inclusive sense, psychological mechanisms offer a type of causal explanation of mental states and behavior, often with reference to underlying processes, systems, activities, or entities. By postulating and investigating such mechanisms, researchers have sought explanations of a wide range of psychological phenomena. However, the concept has been deployed in dramatically different ways, with very different meanings, depending upon the particular school or tradition of psychology (and specific research program therein). In fact, usage has been so diverse as (...) to defy easy categorization or definition. But a historical perspective, even if rather selective, can trace the broad outlines of the significance of psychological mechanisms for the study of the mind. Perhaps most notable is the role they have played in the psychoanalytic tradition; research efforts within behaviorism and cognitive science have also made liberal use of versions of the concept in their explanatory frameworks (for discussion of evolutionary psychology, see the entry “evolved psychological mechanisms”). Cutting across all of these traditions are several key themes relating to psychological mechanisms, including questions concerning the scope of the relevant causal claims, debates about causal determinism and regularity, and the unresolved relation between mind and body. (shrink)

From 1900 onwards, scientists and novelists have explored the contours of a future society based on the use of “anthropotechnologies” (techniques applicable to human beings for the purpose of performance enhancement ranging from training and education to genome-based biotechnologies). Gradually but steadily, the technologies involved migrated from (science) fiction into scholarly publications, and from “utopia” (or “dystopia”) into science. Building on seminal ideas borrowed from Nietzsche, Peter Sloterdijk has outlined the challenges inherent in this development. Since time immemorial, and at (...) least since the days of Plato’s Academy, human beings have been interested in possibilities for (physical or mental) performance enhancement. We are constantly trying to improve ourselves, both collectively and individually, for better or for worse. At present, however, new genomics-based technologies are opening up new avenues for self-amelioration. Developments in research facilities using animal models may to a certain extent be seen as expeditions into our own future. Are we able to address the bioethical and biopolitical issues awaiting us? After analyzing and assessing Sloterdijk’s views, attention will shift to a concrete domain of application, namely sport genomics. For various reasons, top athletes are likely to play the role of genomics pioneers by using personalized genomics information to adjust diet, life-style, training schedules and doping intake to the strengths and weaknesses of their personalized genome information. Thus, sport genomics may be regarded as a test bed where the contours of genomics-based self-management are tried out. (shrink)

The emerging concept of systems medicine (or ‘P4 medicine’—predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical (...) holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention). (shrink)

The emergent new science of synthetic biology is challenging entrenched distinctions between, amongst others, life and non-life, the natural and the artificial, the evolved and the designed, and even the material and the informational. Whenever such culturally sanctioned boundaries are breached, researchers are inevitably accused of playing God or treading in Frankenstein’s footsteps. Bioethicists, theologians and editors of scientific journals feel obliged to provide an authoritative answer to the ambiguous question of the ‘meaning’ of life, both as a scientific definition (...) and as an explication with wider existential connotations. This article analyses the arguments mooted in the emerging societal debates on synthetic biology and the way its practitioners respond to criticism, mostly by assuming a defiant posture or professing humility. It explores the relationship between the ‘playing God’ theme and the Frankenstein motif and examines the doctrinal status of the ‘playing God’ argument. One particularly interesting finding is that liberal theologians generally deny the religious character of the ‘playing God’ argument—a response which fits in with the curious fact that this argument is used mainly by secular organizations. Synthetic biology, it is therefore maintained, does not offend so much the God of the Bible as a deified Nature. While syntheses of artificial life forms cause some vague uneasiness that life may lose its special meaning, most concerns turn out to be narrowly anthropocentric. As long as synthetic biology creates only new microbial life and does not directly affect human life, it will in all likelihood be considered acceptable. (shrink)

This paper examines processes of translation through which molecular genetic technologies and practices are incorporated into environmental health research and regulation. Specifically, it considers how scientists, risk assessors, and regulators have used genetically modified mouse models to translate across scientific disciplines, articulate emergent molecular forms, standards, and practices with the extant? gold standard,? and establish roles for molecular knowledge in risk assessment and regulation. Noting variation both within and between regulatory agencies in responses to data from these models, the article (...) describes also the role of public-private networks and their effects on professional and institutional imperatives which shape regulators? responses to the potential applications of these models. The conclusions address the importance of translation for understanding the wider implications of the molecularization of environmental health science. (shrink)

This article examines to what extent a particular case of cross-disciplinary research in the 1930s was structured by mechanistic reasoning. For this purpose, it identifies the interfield theories that allowed biologists and chemists to use each other’s techniques and findings, and that provided the basis for the experiments performed to identify plant growth hormones and to learn more about their role in the mechanism of plant growth. In 1930, chemists and biologists in Utrecht and Pasadena began to cooperatively study plant (...) growth. I will argue that these researchers decided to join forces because they believed to rely on each other’s findings and methods to solve their research problems adequately. In the course of the cooperation, organic chemists arrived at isolating plant growth hormones by using a test method developed in plant physiology. This achievement, in turn, facilitated biologists’ investigation of the mechanism of plant growth. Researchers eventually believed to have the means to study the relation between a substance’s molecular structure and its physiological activity. The way they conceptualized the problem of identifying hormones and unraveling the mechanism of plant growth, as well as their actual research actions are compatible with the new mechanists’ account of mechanism research. The study illustrates that focusing on researchers’ mechanistic reasoning can contribute considerably to explaining the structure of cross-disciplinary research projects. (shrink)

What does "nature" mean? This general question, central to the social construction of nature, is addressed here by examining one of nature's particulars, Pacific salmon, and by looking at how one group of people, salmon biologists, imbue the fish with meaning. Based upon historical, comparative, and qualitative data, it appears that nature is socially constructed through both cognitive and physical processes. "Salmon"- and indirectly nature - emerges not as a monolithic, timeless, certain entity, but rather as one that is manipulable, (...) fleeting, and the product of a variety of social relations. In particular, public policy and economics appear to have profoundly influenced salmon biologists' cognitive and physical constructions of salmon. (shrink)

Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology.

The ArgumentThe paper is divided into the two parts. In the first, I examine the relations among molecular biology, gene technology, and medicine as some aspect of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project of the consequences of these relations with respect to the human genome project. I argue that the prevailing momentum of early molecular biology resided in argue that the prevailing momentum of relay molecular biology resided in crating the technical means for an (...) extracellular representation of intracellular configurations. Assuch, its medical impact was rather limited. With the advent of recombinant DNA technology is based on the prospects of an intracellular representation of extracellular projects—the “rewriting” of life. Its medical impact is potentially unlimited. In the second part, I question the very opposition between nature and culture that implicitly underlies the notion of medicine as a “cultural system.” I argue that both on a macroscopic level and on a microscopic level, the “natural” and the “social” are no longer to be seen as ontologically different.In its uncanny oscillation between retrospection and foresight, between description and proclamation, and between assertion and hesitation, this essay translates an uneasiness that I have not been able to overcome while writing it. The essay conveys the tangled views of a hybrid author who himself cannot but oscillate between the perspectives of an actor in the field of molecular biology, a participant in the field of science studies, and a citizen. (shrink)

The Darwinian economic theory that Thorstein Veblen proposed and refined while he served as a professor of Political Economy at the University of Chicago from 1891 to 1906 should be assessed in the context of the community of Darwinian scientists and social scientists with whom Veblen worked and lived at Chicago. It is important to identify Veblen as a member of this broad community of Darwinian-inclined philosophers, physiologists, geologists, astronomers, and biologists at Chicago because Veblen’s involvement with this circle suggests (...) that the possible sources of his engagement with Darwinism extend beyond the pragmatists and Continental socialists to whom scholars have typically ascribed Veblen’s Darwinian roots. Additionally, that an extensive community continued to use Darwinian evolutionary theory to construct new models of scientific and social scientific analysis at the turn of the twentieth century, a period during which Darwinism was purportedly in decline, suggests that the “eclipse of Darwinism” narrative has been overstated in literature about Darwinism’s intellectual arc. (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)

Das Ideal einer vorhersagenden Medizin in Kombination mit wirkungsvollen, kausalen Strategien der Prävention auf molekularer Ebene ist noch immer weit davon entfernt, klinische Realität zu werden. Es ist jedoch schon heute festzustellen, dass zwischen Medizin und Gesellschaft verhandelte Konzepte von Gesundheit in immer stärkerem Maße auf zukünftige Gesundheit ausgerichtet sind, mithin einen immer präventiveren Charakter aufweisen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Frage, ob neue Konzepte einer prädiktiv-präventiven Medizin – insbesondere Public Health Genetics bzw. Public Health Genomics – das Kriterium der (...) Verbesserung der sozialen Erreichbarkeit von Gesundheit erfüllen. Diese Analyse wird vor dem Hintergrund der Rolle sozialer Grundwerte, insbesondere dem der Gerechtigkeit, für Funktionen der Medizin in unserer Gesellschaft einerseits sowie der Bedeutung des Wandels der medizinischen Schlüsselkonzepte „Gesundheit“ und „Krankheit“ andererseits vorgenommen. (shrink)

Taking into account how much modern medicine is a function of—and at the same time has a function in—science and technology, it is hardly surprising that both the approach of science studies and the idea of the social and cultural construction of health, disease, and bodies overlap, generally and specifically, in the realm of the novel field of MEDICINE STUDIES. The work already done in science and technology studies as well as in social studies of medicine, together with the rich (...) tradition of medical history and philosophy of medicine, may be considered a solid base and a good vantage point for further analysis. By exploring the shifts of knowledge production in medicine we may be able to see the driving forces behind the ongoing development of medicine and the associated transformation of its social functions in a new light. Based on historiographical reconstructions we may come up with a much more broadly contextualized understanding of the ways in which science, technology, medicine and society interact and in what regard their mutual interdependencies have been undergoing profound changes for a number of decades. By tracing the channels through which key concepts defining the relationship of medicine and its social context are negotiated, we may further explore how our notions of health, disease, and humanity are continuously morphing alongside the incessant transformations of medicine. This editorial explores the aims and scope of MEDICINE STUDIES as a truly transdisciplinary endeavor. (shrink)

Historians and philosophers of twentieth-century life sciences have demonstrated that the choice of experimental organism can profoundly influence research fields, in ways that sometimes undermined the scientists’ original intentions. The present paper aims to enrich and broaden the scope of this literature by analysing the career of unicellular green algae of the genus Chlorella. They were introduced for the study of photosynthesis in 1919 by the German cell physiologist Otto H. Warburg, and they became the favourite research objects in this (...) field up to the 1960s. The paper argues that dealing with Chlorella’s high metabolic flexibility was crucial for the emergence of a new conception of photosynthesis, as a plastic, integrated system of pathways. At the same time, it led to new collaborations between physiologists and phycologists, both of whom started to re-orient their studies in ecologically informed directions. Following Chlorella’s trail, hence, not only elucidates how experimental organisms forced scientists to change their conceptual approaches and techniques, but also provides insight into the interaction of different lines of research of mid-twentieth century plant sciences. (shrink)

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the process of photosynthesis was still a mystery: Plant scientists were able to measure what entered and left a plant, but little was known about the intermediate biochemical and biophysical processes that took place. This state of affairs started to change between the two world wars, when a number of young scientists in Europe and the United States, all of whom identified with the methods and goals of physicochemical biology, selected photosynthesis as (...) a topic of research. The protagonists had much in common: They had studied physics and chemistry (although not necessarily plant physiology) to a high level; they used physicochemical methods to study the basic processes of life; they believed these processes were the same, or very similar, in all life forms; and they were affiliated with institutions that fostered this kind of study. This set of cognitive, methodological, and material resources enabled these protagonists to transfer their knowledge of the concepts and techniques from microbiology and human biochemistry, for example, to the study of plant metabolism. These transfers of knowledge had a great influence on the way in which the biochemistry and biophysics of photosynthesis would be studied over the following decades. Through the use of four historical cases, this paper analyzes these knowledge transfers, as well as the investigative pathways that made them possible. (shrink)

In 1967, American biologist Adrian Wenner (1928-) launched an extensive challenge to Karl von Frisch's (1886-1982) theory that bees communicate to each other the direction and distance of food sources by a symbolic dance language. Wenner and various collaborators argued that bees locate foods solely by odors. Although the dispute had largely run its course by 1973 -- von Frisch was awarded a Nobel Prize, while Wenner withdrew from active bee research -- it offers us a rare window into mid-twentieth (...) century discussions about animals, language, and cognition. Historians, sociologists, and scientists have commented on the debate and its outcome, but none has seriously questioned why von Frisch and Wenner pursued such different explanations of the bees' dances. In this paper, I explore von Frisch and Wenner's differing visions of animals and their behaviors and show how these contributed to their respective positions. Von Frisch's early-twentieth-century training in experimental physiology disposed him to focus on individual animals, their abilities, and their behaviors' evolutionary significance. Wenner, by contrast, was trained in mathematics and statistics and the Schneirla school of behavior. He viewed the bees' behaviors probabilistically with an eye toward the entire hive and its surroundings and ultimately explained them in terms of simple stimulus--response conditioning. Finally, while the debate was resolved in von Frisch's favor, he neither waged nor won the battle by himself. Instead, I show that practitioners, whose agendas ranged from the nascent fields of sociobiology to cognitive ethology, took up the cause of the communicating bees. (shrink)

After Darwin, experimental biology sought to unravel organisms. By the early twentieth century, organisms were broadly conceived as the product of their heredity and their environment. Much historical work has explored the scientific attack on the genotype, particularly through the new science of genetics. This article explores the tandem efforts to assert experimental control over the environment in which plants grew and developed. The case described here concerns the creation of the first phytotron at Caltech by botanist and plant physiologist (...) Frits Went. Opening in 1949, the phytotron was a plant laboratory that, across a series of rooms and chambers, kept genes constant while regulating and maintaining defined ranges of known environments. This article details the context in which the phytotron emerged, how the phytotron gained its sobriquet, and how it served to cement the “environment” as a category of biological knowledge. Describing the institutional context of Caltech, its interdisciplinary culture, and its encouragement of adopting technology into biological science, I argue that the phytotron and the commensurate category of the “environment” were the product of the familiar movement to integrate the physical and biological sciences. In addition, however, the creation of the phytotron was also a broader story of plant physiologists establishing a definition of the “environment” in both physical and technological terms. (shrink)

The historiography of the ‘dark age’ of biochemistry between 1910–1930 is examined. The biochemistry of the period is located within a larger contemporary debate on the interrelationship between structure and function on a submicroscopic level. It is suggested that biocolloid science was an understandable part of the historical development of biochemistry, representing a conceptual bridge between the cell biology of the late nineteenth century, and the era of structural macromolecular studies of proteins that began after 1930.

The history of twentieth-century life sciences is not exactly a new topic. However, in view of the increasingly rapid development of the life sciences themselves over the past decades, some of the well-established narratives are worth revisiting. Taking stock of where we stand on these issues was the aim of a conference in 2015, entitled “Perspectives for the History of Life Sciences”. The papers in this topical collection are based on work presented and discussed at and around this meeting. Just (...) as the conference, the collection aims at exploring fields in the history of life sciences that appear understudied, sources that have been overlooked, and novel ways of engaging with this material. The papers convened in this collection may not be representative of the field as a whole; but we feel that they do indicate some elements that have received emphasis in recent years, and may become more central in the years to come, such as the history of previously neglected contexts and domains of the life sciences, the question of continuity and change on the level of practices, the history of complexity and diversity in twentieth-century life sciences and the reconsideration of the relationship between history and philosophy of life sciences. (shrink)

Cloning -- the process of creating a cell, tissue line or even a complete organism from a single cell -- or the strands that led to the cloning of a mammal, Dolly, are not new. Yet the media coverage of Dolly's inception raised a range of reactions from fear or moral repulsion, to cautious optimism. The implications for controlling human reproduction were clearly in the forefront, though many issues about animals emerged as well. On topics of public interest such as (...) cloning, historians of biology have the opportunity to make a unique contribution. Such debates are often aired as if they have no precedents, either in biology or in the ethical, moral, and social concerns arising in the public arena. The technology leading to Dolly draws on strands of research going back to the 1890s, and the cycle of public response has been repeated often in the past century. What can we learn from examining these events historically, and how can we -- or should we even try -- to inform public opinion? I think we should try and will outline briefly some of the ways that can work. (shrink)

In his 1987 book "Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology", Philip Pauly presented his readers with the biologist Jacques Loeb and his role in developing an emphasis on control of life processes. Loeb's work on artificial parthenogenesis, for example, provided an example of bioengineering at work. This paper revisits Pauly's study of Loeb and explores the way current research in regenerative medicine reflects the same tradition. A history of regeneration research reveals patterns of thinking and research (...) methods that both echo Loeb's ideology and point the way to modern studies. Pauly's work revealed far more than we readers realized at the time of its publication. (shrink)

This paper aims to propose an inferential and dynamic approach to understanding with models in biology. Understanding plays a central role in the practice of modeling. From its links with the other two central elements of scientific research, experimentation, and explanation, we show its epistemic relevance to the case of explanation in biology. Furthermore, by including the notion of understanding, we propose a non-referentialist perspective on scientific models, which is determined by their use.

Review of: Sophia Roosth, Synthetic: How Life Got Made (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Andrew S. Balmer, Katie Bulpin, and Susan Molyneux-Hodgson, Synthetic Biology: A Sociology of Changing Practices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Between 1900 and 1930 colloid chemistry, a branch of physical chemistry, gained crucial importance for the understanding of vital phenomena. To many it seemed that the properties of colloids would differ from those of ordinary matter, paralleling the specific properties of protoplasm, the living substance . The application of theoretical concepts and experimental models of colloid chemistry to biological problems shaped Biocolloidology as a new research program, which appeared promising for the exploration of organic processes such as mitotic cell division, (...) growth, muscle contraction and movement. Biocolloidology could simultaneously absorb the quest for a physical-chemical explanation of life and the (post)-romantic notion of organic nature as a container of creative and vital forces that was central to life-philosophy. At least until the late 1920s, it is argued, the merging of different scientific and philosophical metaphors made Biocolloidology and the concept of protoplasm highly appealing in a broad cultural context. (shrink)

Bionomics was a research approach invented by British biological scientists in the late nineteenth century and adopted by the American entomologist and evolutionist Vernon Lyman Kellogg in the early twentieth century. Kellogg hoped to use bionomics, which was the controlled observation and experimentation of organisms within settings that approximated their natural environments, to overcome the percieved weaknesses in the Darwinian natural selection theory. To this end, he established a bionomics laboratory at Stanford University, widely published results from his bionomic investigations, (...) and encouraged other biological researchers to adopt bionomics. (shrink)

This paper explores the question whether war was regarded as eugenic or dysgenic before, during and after the First World War. The main focus is on the positions of the German military officer and historian Friedrich von Bernhardi, who in Germany and the Next War, first published in 1912, argued for war as eugenic, and Vernon Kellogg’s Headquarters Nights, published in 1917, which marks an important work characterizing war as dysgenic. I argue that an international community of biologists and social (...) scientists who debated the hereditary effect of war existed before World War I and trace how the concepts of altruism and group selection contributed to a eugenic or dysgenic interpretation of war. (shrink)

Around the turn of the twentieth century, microbiologists in Western Europe and North America began to organize centralized collections of microbial cultures. Collectors published lists of the strains they cultured, offering to send duplicates to colleagues near and far. This essay explores the history of microbial culture collections through two cases: Johanna Westerdijk’s collection of phytopathogenic fungi in the Netherlands and Ernst Georg Pringsheim’s collection of single-celled algae at the German University in Prague. Historians of science have tended to look (...) at twentieth-century biological specimen collections as either repositories of communal research materials or storehouses of economically important biological variation. An examination of Westerdijk’s and Pringsheim’s collections illustrates how collectors, researchers, and patrons ascribed different kinds of value to collections featuring distinctive microbial life forms. This essay argues that characteristics of cultivated microorganisms, such as a fungus’s propensity to infect crops or an alga’s amenability to experimentation, shaped the trajectories of Westerdijk’s and Pringsheim’s collections as these collectors developed relationships with colleagues and patrons. Letters between Westerdijk and Pringsheim open a window onto divergences in their approaches to collecting cultures, while also shedding light on the aspirational internationality of the collections that resulted. (shrink)

The ways in which the various activities of synthetic biology connect to those of conventional biology display both a multiplicity and variety that reflect the multiplicity and variety of meanings for which the term synthetic biology has been invoked, today as in the past. Central to this variety, as well as to the connection itself, is the complex relationship between knowing and making that has prevailed in the life sciences. That relationship is the focus of this article. More specifically, my (...) aim is to explore the different assumptions about how knowing is related to making that have prevailed, implicitly or explicitly in the various activities—now or in the past—subsumed under the name synthetic biology. (shrink)

Gene editing tools are ‘revolutionizing’ microbiological research. Much of the public debate focuses on the possibility of human germ line applications. The use of genome editing to alter non-human animals, however, will have more immediate impacts on our daily lives. Genome edited animals are used for basic biological and biomedical research and could soon play a role in the livestock industry and ecosystem management. Genome editing thus provides an occasion to rethink societal narratives about the relationships between humans and other (...) animals. Even though the technique can be easily incorporated as an example into a conventional storyline about the development of the modern life sciences as striving for control over nature, it can also help to highlight the anthropocentric biases expressed in these narratives and demonstrate the continuities between humans and other animals. (shrink)

The relationship of man himself to his environment is an inseparable part of ecology; for he also is an organism and other organisms are a part of his environment. Ecology, therefore, broadly conceived and rightly understood, instead of being an academic science merely, out of touch with humanistic interests, is really that part of every other biological science which brings it into immediate relation to human kind. The proper place of humans in ecological study has been a recurring issue for (...) ecology. Of course humans are part of Nature writ large, but are they part of the ecologist's nature? The question bothered biologists even before the discipline of ecology was firmly institutionalized.... (shrink)

New emerging biotechnologies, such as gene editing, vastly extend our ability to alter the human being. This comes together with strong aspirations to improve humans not only physically, but also mentally, morally, and socially. These conjoined ambitions aggregate to what can be labelled “the gene editing of super-ego.” This article investigates a general way used to argue for new biotechnologies, such as gene-editing: if it is safe and efficacious to implement technology X for the purpose of a common good Y, (...) why should we not do so? This is a rhetorical question with a conditional, and may be dismissed as such. Moreover, investigating the question transformed into a formal argument reveals that the argument does not hold either. Nonetheless, the compelling force of the question calls for closer scrutiny, revealing that this way of arguing for biotechnology is based on five assumptions. Analysis of these assumptions shows their significant axiological, empirical, and philosophical challenges. This makes it reasonable to claim that these kinds of question based promotions of specific biotechnologies fail. Hence, the aspirations to make a super-man with a super-ego appear fundamentally flawed. As these types of moral bioenhancement arguments become more prevalent, a revealing hype test is suggested: What is special with this technology, compared to existing methods, that makes it successful in improving human social characteristics in order to make the world a better place for all? Valid answers to this question will provide good reasons to pursue such technologies. Hence, the aim is not to bar the development of modern biotechnology, but rather to ensure good developments and applications of highly potent technologies. So far, we still have a long way to go to make persons with goodness gene. (shrink)

Inspired by the success of synthesising organic substances by Friedrich Wöhler in 1828, the vision of creating life in the laboratory synthetically has become increasingly accessible for today’s synthetic biology and synthetic genomics, respectively. The engineering of biology – a contemporary version of the liaison of technology and organic form – creates cellular machines, biobricks, biomolecular ‘borgs’, and entire synthetic genomes of artificial organisms. Besides major ethical concerns, the shift in scientific epistemology is of interest. Unlike classical analytical science, synthetic (...) science understands by a process of generation, through which myriads of new things are created, dramatically changing the living environment. (shrink)

In the late 19th century, physiologists such as David Ferrier, Eduard Hitzig, and Hermann Munk argued that cerebral brain functions are localized in discrete structures. By the early 20th century, this became the dominant position. However, another prominent physiologist, Friedrich Goltz, rejected theories of cerebral localization and argued against these physiologists until his death in 1902. I argue in this paper that previous historical accounts have failed to comprehend why Goltz rejected cerebral localization. I show that Goltz adhered to a (...) falsificationist methodology, and I reconstruct how he designed his experiments and weighted different kinds of evidence. I then draw on the exploratory experimentation literature from recent philosophy of science to trace one root of the debate to differences in how the German localizers designed their experiments and reasoned about evidence. While Goltz designed his experiments to test hypotheses about the functions of predetermined cerebral structures, the localizers explored new functions and structures in the process of constructing new theories. I argue that the localizers relied on untested background conjectures to justify their inferences about functional organization. These background conjectures collapsed a distinction between phenomena they produced direct evidence for (localized symptoms) and what they reached conclusions about (localized functions). (shrink)

Sociologists have challenged the discipline to account for and incorporate biological factors in their analyses. Heeding this call, this article asks how chimeras, a particularly puzzling biological organism, are being officially classified in the interrelated sites of endangered species preservation and the zoo. Based on a qualitative study of endeavors to clone endangered animals, I contend that biology alone cannot determine the classification of these interspecies organisms. Rather, categorizing chimeras requires metaphoric, schematic references to more familiar entities. Here culture and (...) biology are tools for classification, which has consequences for preservation practices and the materiality of endangered wildlife. Drawing on the sociology of culture, I show that positions on classification represent an intermediary space for interpreting the relationship between meaning and action in discourse elaboration. Building on the sociology of science and technology, I show the epistemological limitations of understanding the biological as an a priori factor. (shrink)

Shortly after bacteriologist Paul de Kruif had been dismissed from a research position at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, he started contributing to a novel in collaboration with the future Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis. The novel, Arrowsmith, would become one of the most famous satires on medicine and science. Using de Kruif’s correspondence with his idol Jacques Loeb, this paper describes the many ways in which medical science is depicted in Arrowsmith. This article compares the novel with de Kruif’s (...) and Loeb’s biographies, and focuses on the struggles of the main character, Martin Arrowsmith, as an allegory of the institutionalisation of medical research in the US, shows that Sinclair’s purpose is to caricaturise scientific work in modern medical research institutions anywhere and shows that the novel depicts a reductionist philosophy of research that seems to contradict the “messiness” of medical practice. (shrink)

The Plymouth Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (1884) was founded in 1888. In addition to conducting morphological and other biological research, the founders of the laboratory aimed at promoting research in experimental zoology which will be used in this paper as a synonym for e. g. experimental embryology, comparative physiology or general physiology. This dream was not fully realized until 1920. The Great War and its immediate aftermath had a positive impact on the development of (...) the Plymouth Laboratory. The war greatly upset the operation of the Zoological Station in Naples and the ensuing crisis in its operations was closely related to the establishment of the physiological department in Plymouth in 1920. Two other key factors in the Plymouth story were the establishment of the Development Fund in 1909, which began contributing funds to the Plymouth Laboratory in 1912, and the patronage of the Cambridge zoologist George P. Bidder (1863-1954). This paper will focus on the combined influence of the Development Fund and Bidder on the development of the Plymouth Laboratory from around 1902 through the early 1920s, and the important role the laboratory played in promoting experimental zoology in Britain in the 1920s. (shrink)

Iceland has not been known as a contributor to the history of science. This small nation in the North-Atlantic has only in recent decades made its mark on international science. But the Icelandic naturalist Thorvaldur Thoroddsen (1855-1921) is an exception to this generalisation, for he was well known at the turn of the 20th century in Europe and America for his research on the geography and geology of Iceland. Though Thoroddsen's contribution to these sciences is of great interest there is (...) another very interesting side to his career. This is his transformation from "mechanist" to "vitalist," which is the main focus of this paper. Thoroddsen, who began his career as a follower of Darwinism and Haeckelian monism, started to express his worries about materialism in society in 1902 culminating in a full-fledged denial of materialism in politics and science in 1910. Thoroddsen's transformation is in its nature a very complex process, but overall it can be traced to his view that materialism was destroying the Danish and Icelandic societies. In the years before 1902 Thoroddsen was a monistic atheist, relatively liberal in his politics, a firm believer in the power of the natural sciences, and considered the laws of physics the key to human progress. His views were strikingly similar to the ones Haeckel expounded in "The Riddle of the Universe" (1899), whose reception in Germany is explored in this paper in order to contextualise Thoroddsen's transformation. Between 1902 and 1910, however, Thoroddsen rejected this worldview in favour of conservative politics and ontological dualism, becoming a staunch believer in a higher, godly, authority. The theories of Darwin and Haeckel were now obsolete and needed to be replaced by the idea of purpose, direction and the final goal of life (Teleology). In order to understand Thoroddsen's transformation, I focus on the interaction of scientific knowledge, politics and other cultural issues in his writings. This is done by looking at Thoroddsen's views on biology, on the natural sciences in general, and on politics as published in Icelandic articles, manuscripts and letters in the period 1872 to 1910. I show that the transformation was due to influences from the German holistic movement, Thoroddsen's engagement with the Royal elite in Denmark and its political concerns, new developments in physics, and from personal traumas and professional disappointments. I also show that Thoroddsen's transformation seems to be a good example of the social shaping of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Understanding modeling in biology requires understanding how biology is organized as a discipline and how this organization influences the research practices of biologists. Biology includes a wide range of sub-disciplines, such as cell biology, population biology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and systems biology among others. Biologists in sub-disciplines such as cell, molecular, and systems biology believe that the use of a few experimental models allows them to discover biological universals, whereas biologists in sub-disciplines such as ecology and evolutionary biology believe (...) that the use of many different experimental and mathematical models is necessary in order to do this. Many practitioners of both approaches misunderstand best practices of modeling, especially those related to model testing. We stress the need for biologists to better engage with best practices and for philosophers of biology providing normative guidance for biologists to better engage with current developments in biology. This is especially important as biology transitions from a “data-poor” to a “data-rich” discipline. If 21st century biology is going to capitalize on the unprecedented availability of ecological, evolutionary, and molecular data, of computational resources, and of mathematical and statistical tools, biologists will need a better understanding of what modeling is and can be. (shrink)