1 JjT Introduction:

How to write history of biology

ANYTHING THAT changes in time has, by definition, a his- 1

tory-the universe, countries, dynasties, art and philosophy, and ideas. Science also, ever since its emergence from myths and early philosophies, has experienced a steady historical change and is

thus a legitimate subject for the historian. Because the essence of science is the continuing process of problem solving in the quest

for an understanding of the world in which we live, a history of science is first a history of the problems of science and their solution or attempted solutions. But it is also a history of the development of the principles that form the conceptual framework of science. Because the great controversies of the past often reach-

- into modern ,science, many current arguments cannot be fully understood unless orie understands their history.

Written histories, like science itself, are constantly in need of revision. Erroneous interpretations of an earlier author eventually become myths, accepted without question and carried forward from generation to generation. A particular endeavor of mine has been to expose and eliminate as many of these myths as possiblewithout, I hope, creating too many new ones. The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and epherneral.!

When we compare published histories of science, it becom~s at once apparent that different historians have quite different concepts of science and also of history writing. Ultimately all of them attempt to portray the increase in scientific knowledge and the changes in interpretive concepts. But not all historians of sci" ence have attempted to answer· the six principal questions that '. must be addressed by anyone who wants to describe the progress of science critically and comprehensively: Who? When? Where?

"

THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

ative importance, particularly with reference to specific developments, such as Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Often it is rather difficult even to distinguish external from internal factors. The Great Chain of Being (scala naturae) was a philosophical concept which clearly had an impact on concept formation in the case of Lamarck and other early evolutionists. Yet, Aristotle had developed this concept on the basis of empirical ob-

0_ servations of organisms. On the other hand, universally adopted ideologies are among the most uncontroversial of external factors. The Christian dogma of creationism and the argument from design coming from natural theology dominated biological thinking for centuries. Essentialism (from Plato) is another all-powerful ideology. Interestingly, its displacement by Darwinwas largely due to the observations of animal breeders and taxonomists-that is, to internal factors.

-/

External factors do not necessarily originate in religion, philosophy, cultural life or politics, but-as far as biology is Concerned-they may originate in a - different science. The extreme physicalism (including determinism and extreme reductionism) that was prevalent in Western thinking after the scientific revolution strongly influenced theory formation in biology for several centuries, often quite adversely as is now evident. Scholastic logic, to cite another example, dominated taxonomic method- from Cesalpino to Linnaeus. These examples, to which many others could be added, document without doubt the importance of external influences on theory formation in biology. They will be analyzed in full detail in the relevant chapters.

It is important> to realize that external factors influence science in two entirely different ways: They may either affect the overall level of scientific activity at a given place at a given time, or they may affect or even give rise to a particular scientific theory. All too often in the past these two aspects have been lumped together, resulting in much controversy over the relative importance of external versus internal factors.

The effect of environmental conditions on the level of scientific activities has been appreciated as long as there has been a history of science. It has been speculated endlessly as to why the Greeks had such an interest in scientific questions and why there was a revival of science during the. Renaissance. What was the effect of Protestantism on science (Merton, 1938)? Why did scienceduring the nineteenth century flourish to such an- extent in Germany? Sometimes important external factors can be specified,

How TO WRITE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY

for instance (as Merz, 1896-1914, has pointed out), the replacement in 1694 of Latin by German at Halle University, and the founding in 1737 of a University at Gottingen in which "Wissenschaft' played an important role. Institutional changes of all sorts, including the founding of the Royal Society, political events such as wars and the launching of Sputnick, as well as technological needs have had either a stimulating or a depressing effect on the level of scientific activity. Yet, this still leaves open the highly controversial question of to what extent such external factors have

favored or inhibited specific scientific theories. 5

In recent years Marxist historiographers in particular have voiced the thesis that social ideologies influence the ideas of a scientist, and that the history of science as practiced until now has totally neglected the social context. The result, they believe, has been a bourgeois history of science, which is quite different from what a proletarian history of science would be. What is needed instead, they say, is "radical" history. This demand ultimately goes back to Marx's claim that ruling ideas cannot be separated from ruling classes. Therefore, bourgeois history of science will be quite different from proletarian history of science.

However, the thesis that there is a proletarian way to write the history of science is in conflict with three sets of facts: First, the masses do not establish scientific theories that are different from those of the scientific class. If there is any difference, it is that the "common man" often retains ideas long after they have been discarded by scientists. Second, there is high social mobility among scientists, with from one quarter to one third of each new crop of scientists coming from the lower socioeconomic classes. Third, birth order within a social class tends to be far more important in determining those who originate rebellious new ideas than does membership in a particular class (Sulloway, 'MS). All of this is in conflict with the thesis that the socioeconomic environment has a dominant impact on the birth of particular new scientific ideas and concepts.' The burden of proof is clearly on those who make such claims, and so far they have failed to supply any concrete evidence whatsoever (see Chapter 11).

Of course no one lives in a vacuum, and anyone who reads voraciously, as for example Darwin did after his return from the

,voyage of the Beagle, is bound to be influenced by his reading (Schweber, 1977). Darwin's notebooks are ample evidence for the correctness of this inference. But, as Hodge '(1974) points out, this by itself does not' prove the thesis of the Marxists that "Darwin

GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

Wallace were extending the laissez-faire capitalist ethos from ety to all nature." Up to now it appears that the influence of al factors on the development of specific biological advances been negligible. The reverse, of course, is not true. But the ly of the impact of science on social theory, social institutions; . politics belongs to the domains of history, sociology, and poal science, and not to that of the history of science. I agree 1 Alexander Koyre (1965: 856) that it is futile to "deduce the .tence'' of certain scientists and sciences from their environnt, "Athens does not explain Plato anymore than Syracuse exins Archimedes or Florence Galileo. To look for explanations og these lines is an entirely futile enterprise, as futile as trying predict the future evolution of science or of the sciences as a .ction of the structure of the social context." Thomas Kuhn 71: 280) has likewise observed that the historian seems invariy to give "excessive emphasis to the role of the. surrounding nate of extra-scientific ideas" (see also Passmore, 1965).

Problematic Histories

More than one hundred years ago Lord Acton advised hisians, "Study problems, not periods." This advice is particularly propriate for the history of biology, which is characterized by ! longevity of its scientific problems. Most of the great contro.sies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relate to oblems already known to Aristotle. Such controversies endure im generation to generation, and from century to century. They ~ processes, not events, and can be fully understood only through iistorical treatment. As R.G. Collingwood said of history (1939: ), it "is concerned not with events but with processes. Processes e things which do not begin and end but turn into one anher." This must be stressed particularly in the face of the static ews of the logical positivists who thought that logical structure IS the real problem of science: "The philosophy of science is nceived [by them] primarily as a careful and detailed analysis of e logical structure and the conceptual problems of contempo-' ry science" (Laudan, 1968). Actually most scientific problems are r better understood by studying their history than their logic. owever, it must be remembered that problematic history does )t replace chronological history. The two approaches are comementary.

In the problematic )roach the chief emphasis 'is placed on ie history of attempts to solve problems-for instance, the nature

How TO WRITE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY

of fertilization or the direction-giving factor in evolution. The history not only of the successful but also of the unsuccessful attempts to solve these problems is presented. In the treatment of the major controversies in the field, an endeavor' is made to" analyze the ideologies (or dogmas) as well as the particular evidence by which the adversaries supported their opposing theories. In problematic history the emphasis is on the working scientist and his conceptual world. What were the scientific problems of his time? What were the conceptual and technical tools available to

him in his quest for: a solution? What were the methods he could 7

employ? What prevalent ideas of his period directed his research

and influenced his decisions? Questions of this nature dominate

the approach in problematic history. . ..

I have chosen this approach for the present book. The reader should be aware of the fact that this is not a traditional history of science. Owing' to its concentration orr the history of scientific pr~bk~s and concepts; it slights by necessity the biographical and sociological aspects of the history of biology. It should therefore

. be us~d in conjunction with a general history of biology (like Nordenskiold, 192·6), with the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, and with available histories of special' areas of biology. Since I am a biologist, I am better qualified to write a history of the problems and concepts of biology than a biographical or sociological history.

. .It is the essence of problematic history to ask. why. Why was It mEngland that the theory' of natural selection was . developed, in fact independently four times? Why did genuine population genetics arise in Russia? Why Were Bateson's explanatory attempts in genetics almost uniformly wrong? Why did Correns get distracted into all sorts of peripheral problems and therefore-contribute so little to major advances in genetics after 1900? Why did the Morgan school devote their efforts for so many years to reinforcing the already well-established chromosome theory of inher- . itance, instead of opening up new frontiers'? Why were- de Vries and Johannsen so much less successful iri the evolutionary appli-

. cation of their findings than' in their straight 'genetic work? Att~mpts to. answer such questions require thecollecting and scrutmy of much evidence; and this almost invariably leads to new insights even if the respective question turns out to have been invalid. Answers to why-questions are inevitably somewhat speculative and subjective, but they force one into the ordering of ob-

)vation~ and into the co~stant testi?g of one's conclusions con- - ._Aent With the hypothetico-deductive method. Now that the )

THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

legitimacy of why-questions has been established even for scientific research, particularly in evolutionary biology, there should be even less question about the legitimacy of such questions in the writing of history. At the worst, the detailed analysis necessitated by such a question may establish that the assumptions underlying the question were wrong. Even this would advance our understanding.

Throughout this volume I have endeavored to carry the analysis of each problem as far as possible and to dissect heterogeneous theories and concepts into their individual components. Not all historians' have been aware how complex many biological concepts are-in fact, how complex the structure of biology as a whole is. As a consequence, some exceedingly confused accounts of the history of biology have been published by authors who did not understand that there are two biologies, that of functional and that of evolutionary causations. Similarly, anyone who writes about "Darwin's theory of evolution" in the singular, without segregating the theories of gradual evolution, common descent, speciation, and the mechanism of natural selection, will be quite unable to discuss the subject competently. Most major theories of biology were, when first proposed, such composites. Their history and their impact cannot be understood unless the various components are separated and studied independently. They often belong to very different conceptual lineages.

It is my conviction that one cannot understand the growth of biological thought unless one understands the thought-structure of biology. For this reason I have attempted to present the insights and concepts of biology in considerable detail. This was particularly necessary in the treatment of diversity (Part I) because no other adequate treatment or conceptual framework of the science of diversity is available. I am aware of the danger that some critic might exclaim, "But this is a textbook of biology, historically arranged!" Perhaps this is what a problematical history of biology ought to be. Perhaps the greatest difficulty any conceptual history of biology must cope with is the longevity of the controversies. Many of the current controversies had their origin generations or even centuries ago, some indeed going all the way back to the Greeks. A more or less "timeless" presentation of the

. issues is more constructive in such cases than a chronological one.

I have tried l _)ke each of the major sections of this volume (Diversity, Evolution, Inheritance) a self-contained unit. A similar separation is attempted for each separate problem within these

How TO WRITE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY

three major areas. This leads to a certain amount of overlap and redundancy because there are numerous cross-connections between different topics and each topical strand win pass through the same sequence of time-dependent intellectual milieus. I have made a special effort to strike a balanc'ebetween a certain 'amount of unavoidable duplication and convenient cross references to other chapters.

)

Subjectivity and Bias

A well-known Soviet theoretician of Marxism has once referredto my writings as "pure dialectical materialism." I am not a Marxist and I do not know the latest definition of dialectical materialism, but I do admit that I share some of Engels' antireductionist views, as stated in his Anti-Dilhring, and that I am greatly attracted by Hegel's scheme of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Furthermore, I believe that an antithesis is most easily provoked by a categorical statement of a thesis, and that the issue is most readily resolved by such a confrontation of an uncompromising thesis and antithesis and that the ultimate synthesis is thus most quickly achieved. Many examples for this can be found in the history of

biology. ,',

This view has dominated my presentation. Whenever possible, I have attempted a synthesis of opposing viewpoints (unless one of them is dearly in error). Where the situation is quite unresolved, I have described the opposing viewpoints in categorical, sometimes almost one-sided, terms in order toprovoke a rejoinder, 'if such is justified. Because I hate beating around the bush, I have sometimes been called 'dogmatic. I think this is the wrong epithet for my attitude. A dogmatic person insists on being right, regardless of opposing evidence. This has never been my attitude and, indeed, I pride myself on having changed my mind on frequent occasions. However, it is true that my tactic is-to.' make sweeping _€ategoiical statements. Whether or not this is a fault, in the free world, of the interchange of scientific ideas, is, debatable. My own feeling is that it leads more quickly to the ultimate solution of scientific problems than a cautious sitting on the fence . Indeed, I agree with Passmore (1965) that histories should even be polemical. Such histories will arouse contradiction and they will challenge the reader to come up with a refutation. By a di }ical process this will speed up a synthesis of perspective. The ~.{am-

9

tHE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

iiguous adoption of a definite viewpoint should not be confused vith subjectivity.

The traditional admonition to historians has always been to be. strictly objective. This ideal was well expressed by the great historian Leopold. von Ranke when he said the historian should "show how it really was." History was envisioned by him as the accurate reconstruction of a series of past events. Such objectivity is entirely appropriate when one attempts to answer who, what, when, and where, although it must be pointed out that even in presenting facts the historian is subjective because he uses value judgments when sorting the facts and is selective when deciding which ones to accept and how to relate them to one another.

Subjectivity enters at every stage of history writing, especially when one is seeking explanations and asks why, as is necessary in problematic history. One cannot arrive at explanations without using one's own personal judgment, and this is inevitably subjective. A subjective treatment is usually far more stimulating than a coldly objective one because it has a greater heuristic value.

To what extent is subjectivity permissible and where does it become bias? Radl (1907-08), for instance, had such a strong antiDarwinian bias that he was not even able to present the Darwinian theory adequately. This clearly went too far. Subjectivity is apt to become bias whenever the evaluation of scientists of former periods is involved. Here historians tend to go either to one or to the other extreme. Either they adopt a strictly retrospective approach in which the past is evaluated entirely in the light of present knowledge and understanding, or else they suppress hindsight completely and describe past events strictly in terms of the thinking at that period. It seems to me that neither approach is entirely satisfactory.

A better procedure would be to combine the best aspects of both approaches. This would first attempt to reconstruct the intellectual milieu of the period as faithfully as possible. But it would not be satisfactory to treat past controversies strictly in terms of the information available at the time. This would leave such controversies as unresolved and opaque as they were when they took place. Instead, modern knowledge should be used whenever this helps in the understanding of past difficulties. Only such an approach will enable us to determine the reasons for the controversy and for the failur resolve it. Was it a semantic difficulty (for example, the use 01 the same word in different meanings), or a conceptual disagreement (such as essentialist vs. population think-

How TO WRITE HISTORY OF BIOL'OGY

ing), or an outright error (like the confusion of ultimate and proximate causes)? A study of past controversies is particularly illuminating when the arguments and opposing viewpoints are

analyzed in terms of our present knowledge. . .' .

Semantic problems are particularly bothersome because they are so often undiscovered. The Greeks, for instance, had a very limited tech'nical vocabulary and often used the same term for rather different things or concepts. Both Plato and Aristotle.used the term eidos (and Aristotle at least, used it in several sensesl),

but the major meaning of the term is totally different in the two , 11 authors. Plato was an essentialist, but Aristotle was essentialist only

to a very limited extent (Balme, 1980). Aristotle' used the term

genos occasionally as a collective noun (corresponding to the taxonomists' genus) but far more often in the sense of species. When Aristotle was rediscovered in the late Middle Ages and translated

into Latin and western European languages, his terms were trans-

lated in "equivalent" terms available in medieval dictionaries. These misleading translations have had an unfortunate influence on our understanding of Aristotle's thought. Some modern authors have

had the courage to use modern terms to reveal Aristotle's thought,

terms he would have quite likely used if hewere living today. I

am thinking of Delbriick's use of "genetic program" to make clear Aristotle's intention when using eidos in the description of individ-

ual development. Likewise, one should· use "teleonomy" (instead

of "teleology") when Aristotle discusses goal-directed ness con-' trolled by an eidos (program). This is not anachronistic but simply

a way of making clear what an ancient author thought, by using a terminology that is unambiguous for a modern reader.

It would, however, be quite inappropriate to use modern hindsight for value judgments. Lamar.ck, for instance, was not nearly as wrong as he seems to those familiar with selectionisrn and Mendelian genetics, when judged in terms of the facts known to him and of the ideas prevailing at his period. The phrase "Whig interpretation of history" was introduced by the historian Herbert Butterfield (1931) to characterize the habit of some English constitutional historians' to see their subject as a progressive broadening of human rights,' in which good "forward looking" liberals were continuously struggling with the "backwardlooking" conser- ' vatives. Butterfield later (1957) applied the term whiggish to thin kind of history of science in which every scientist is judged by th)e extent of his, contribution toward the establishment of our r~eht interpretation of science. Instead of evaluating a scientist i'1 rrns

: GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

he intellectual milieu in which he was active, he is evaluated :tly in terms of current concepts. ~he c?m~lete context of blems and concepts in which the earlier scientists had worked mored in this approach. The history of biology is rich in such

.ed whig interpretations. .

Whenever there is a scientific controversy, the views of the ng side are almost invariably later misrepresented by the vicj. Examples are the treatment of Buffon by the ~i~naeans, of narck by the Cuvierians, of Linnaeus by the Darwlm~ns, ?f the metricians by the Mendelians, and so forth. The historian of logy must attempt to presenta be~ter balanced ~ccount. Many, IV rejected theories, like the inhentance of acquired characters loused by Lamarck, seemed formerly so consistent with ~he own facts that authors should not be criticized for havmg opted such prevailing theories even if they have since been iwn to be wrong. Almost always those who held an er,rone?us -ory had seemingly valid reasons for doing so. Th~y were trymg emphasize something that was neglected by their oppone~ts. ie preformationists, for instance, attempted to stress some.thmg rich was later resurrected as the genetic program. The biornecians upheld Darwin's views of gradual evolution a?ainst the tationism of the Mendelians. In both instances correct Ideas were .nped together with erroneous ones and w~nt .dow~ together th the errors. In my case I tend to pay special attention to un.rdogs (both persons and theories) because in the past they have ten been treated unfairly or at least inadequately.

The path of science is never strai~ht. There a:e always coo:-ting theories and most of the attention of a penod may be dieted toward a side issue which eventually turns out to be a dead id, These developments often illuminate the zeitgeist of a ~eriod ore successfully than the straightforward advances of science. egrettably, lack of space precludes an adequate treatment .of . any of these developments. No history can afford to deal With .ery lost cause 'and every deviation. There are, howeve~, excepons. Some of the failures or errors of the past very SUitably :eeal aspects of contemporary thinking w~ich we might otherw.lse iiss, Macleay's and Swainson's quinarianism, for instance, .whlch as totally eclipsed by the Origin of Species. .repr~sented a smc~re ndeavor to reconcile the seeming chaotic diversity of nature With re then prevailing conviction that there had to be some "higher" rder in nature. It alsr Teals the still powerful hold of the old ryth that all order in ure world is ultimately numerical. As ill-

How TO WRITE HiSTORY OF ~JOLOGY

conceived and ephemeral as the theory of quinarianism was, it nevertheless contributes to our understanding of the thinking of its period. The same can be said of almost any theory or school of the past that is no longer considered valid. The interests of a historian necessarily influence his decision as to which subjects to treat in detail and which others in a more cursory fashion. I tend to agree with Schuster, who said in The Progress of Physics (1911)/ "I prefer to be frankly subjective, and warn you beforehand that my account will be fragmentary, and to a great extent reminiscent of those aspects which have come under my own personal view."

13

\

Historians versus Scientists

Two groups of scholars with entirely different viewpoints and backgrounds-historians and scientists-have claimed. the history of science as their own. Their respective contributions are somewhat different, dictated by differences in their interests and competence. A scientist tends to select for analysis and discussion rather .different problems from a historian or sociologist. For instance, in recent accounts of'evolution by various evolutionists, H. Spencer has hardly received any attention. There are good reasons for this neglect. Not only was Spencer vague and confused, but the ideas he championed were those of others and already obsolete when taken up by Spencer. That Spencer's borrowed ideas were quite popular and influential, as far as the general public was concerned, is without question true, but it is not the task of the scientist-historian to trespass in the domain of the sociologist. Biologists usually lack the competence to deal with social history. On the other hand, it would be just as ridiculous to demand that a social historian present a competent analysis of the scientific issues. The history of science derives inspiration, information, and methodological assistance both from science and from history and, in turn, contributes by its findings to both fields .

There are valid reasons for the interest of both historians and scientists in the history or science. The Greeks had no science, as we now define it, and whatever science they had was practiced by philosophers and physicians. After the Middle Ages there was a continuing trend of emancipation of science from philosophy and from the general zeitgeist. In the Renaissance period and during the eighteenth century scientific beliefs were strongly influenced by the scientists' attitude toward religibn and philosophy. A Cart;_eiian, an orthodox Christian, or a Deist would inevitably have ( ferent ideas on cosmology, generation, and all aspects of t..,

HE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

lterpretation of life, matter, and origins. Nothing signaled the mancipation of science from religion and philosophy more defiitely than the Darwinian revolution. Since that time it has beorne quite impossible to say by looking at an author's scientific .ublications whether he was a devout Christian or an atheist. Exept for a few fundamentalists, this is true even for the writings If biologists on the subject of evolution.

This trend toward the emancipation of science had a consid-rable effect on the writing of the history of science. The farther oack we go in time, the less important becomes the store of scientific knowledge of the period and the more important the general intellectual atmosphere. As far as biology is concerned, it is not until after about 1740 that the scientific problems begin to separate themselves from the general intellectual controversies of the period. There is no question that historians are particularly well qualified to deal with the earlier time span in the history of biology. However, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' history. of special biological disciplines was entirely dominated by scientists, until its rather recent professionalisation. This is well illustrated by such recent histories of special areas in biology, as those of Dunn, Stubbe, and Sturtevant in genetics, of Fruton, Edsall, and Leicester in biochemistry, of Needham and Oppenheimer in embryology, of Baker and Hughes in cytology, of Stresemann in ornithology, to mention only a few names in the extensive literature. They demonstrate the qualification of scientists for historical

research.

The Bias of the Physical Scientists

Most general histories of "science" have been written by historians of physics who have never quite gotten over the parochial attitude that anything that is not applicable to physics is not science. Physical scientists tend to rate biologists on a scale of values depending on the extent to which each biologist has used "laws," measurements, experiments, and other aspects of scientific research that are rated highly in the physical sciences. As a result, the judgments on fields of biology made by certain historians of the physical sciences that one may find in that literature are so ludicrous that one can only smile. For example, knowing that Darwin developed his theory of evolution largely on the basis of his observations as mrralist, one can only marvel at this statement, made. by a well-Known historian of Newton': "The naturalist is indeed a trained observer, but his observations differ from those

How TO WRITE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY

of a gamekeeper only in degree, not in kind' his sole esoteric qual~fication is ~amiliaritywith systematic nomen~lature.'; This kind of biased. physICa~ist thinking is entirely out of place in the study of e~olutlOn~ry b.lOlogy~ as we shall see in Chapter 2. Theory form~uon an~ Its history m evolutionary and systematic biology reqUIre a radlc:ally different approach, an approach which is in some ways ~ore similar to that adopted by a historian of archeology or

by an mterpreter of modern world history. .

Other Biases

. Not)ust th.e physicist but every specialist, quite naturally, conslder.s his particular field of research to be the most interesting ~n~ I.ts me~hods to be the most productive. As a result, often an invidious kmd o~ chauvinism exists among fields, and even within a field such as biology. It is chauvinism, for. instance, when Hartmann (1947) allotted' 98 percent of his large General Biology to physiologi~al. biology and o~ly.~ pe:ce~J to evolutionary biology. It IS cha).lv~msm when certal,n historians ascribe. the occurrence of the evolutl?nary. synthesis entirely to the findings 'of genetics, completely Ignonng the contribution made by'systematics, paleon. tolo~y, and other branches of evolutionary biology (Mayr and

Provme 1980). .

. There is sometimes also a national chauvinism within a field which te~ds ~o exaggerate or even to misrepresent the importance. ?f the sCl.enu.sts from the writer's own country and ·to belittle or Ig?ore scientists of other nations. This is not necessarily due to misplaced patri?tism ?ut .is often the result of an inability to read the languag~s m which Important contributions by scientists of other countries have been published. In my own work I am keenly .awa~e of the probability of bias introduced by my inability to read SlaVIC languages. and Japanese.

15

Pitfalls' and Difficulties

The greatest difficulty in the endeavor to identify the vast number ?f probl~ms of biology and to reconstruct the development of Its. conceptual framework is. the vast amount of material to be studied. This consists, in. principle, of the entire store' of kno~ledge of ?iolop, inch.~ding all books and periodical articles pubhsh~d ?y ~lOlogl~ts, their letters and biographies, information on .the I~stltutlons With which they were associated, con temp' -y SOCIal history, and much else. Not even ftl'e most conscier, .lS

l

THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

historian would be able to cover even one tenth of one percent of all this material. The situation is aggravated by the exponential acceleration in the rate of current scientific output. In an amazingly short span of years more papers (and pages!) are new published than in the whole preceding history of science. Even specialists complain that they can no longer keep up with the avalanche of research output in their own field. Curiously, exactly the same is true fer history writing. In the United States there ar:e now perhaps five times as many historians of biology as there were

only twenty-five years age. .

Even though I have valiantly attempted to read the most irnportant publications, I know that every specialist will di~cover numerous omissions in my treatment and presumably not Infrequent errors. The first draft of most of the manuscript was written from 1970 to 1976 and the more recently published literature is net always as adequately incorporated as would have been desirable. My task would have been altogether impossible if it had not .been for the richness and excellence of the modern secondary literature. The older literature was often rather superficial, and author after author would copy the same myths or errors, as one discov- I ered when .one consulted the original publications. Obviously, in a volume such as this one, which may contain more than 20,000 individual items of information, it is impossible to verify each item in the original source. Since my work is not a lexico.graph~c ~istory, an occasional factual error is not fatal. My major objective has been to synthesize an enormous literature with a consistent emphasis on interpretation and the analysis of causation.

Timeliness .

A criticism often raised against historians of science, and net without justification, is that they are preoccupied tee exclusively with the "prehistory" of science, that is, with periods the ev~nts ~f which are largely irrelevant fer modern science, To avoid this complaint I have tried to bring the story as close ~e the present .as is possible for a nonspecialist. In some cases, fer Instance the discovery in the last five to ten years in molecular biology ef.numerous families of DNA, the conceptual consequences (for Instance en evolution) are still too uncertain to be dealt with.

I disagree with the statement of a recent historian that "the object of the history of science is investigation and disputes that have been concluded rather than issues that are presently alive." This is quite in error. Most scientific controversies extend over far

How TO WRITE HISTeh JF BIOLOGY

longer periods of time than is generally conceived. Even today's controversies have a root that usually gees' far back in time. It is precisely the historical study of such controversies that often contributes materially to a conceptual clarification and thus makes the ultimate solution possible. Analogous to the field of world history, where "current history" is recognized as a legitimate field, there is "current history" in the history of science. ~o.thing_F..Q~).fL~. more misleading .. ~hal) to as.~mLthat the . ..hiStor.y_QLsciens;e......(l~!!!u;>.Qly_" with dead issues. On the contrary, one might even go so far as to consider-as-p;ehistoTY the accounts of long-dead issues of earlier centuries and millennia.

17

Simplification

A historian who covers such a vast area as is dealt with in this. volume is forced to present a highly streamlined account. The reader is warned that the seeming simplicity of many of the developments is quite deceiving. Detailed accounts that concentrate on special developments or short periods must be consulted if one is to appreciate the full flavor of the many cress currents, false starts, and unsuccessful hypotheses that prevailed at any given period. Developments virtually !leY_~LY{ere_i!£... sn:ai_g.lltforward and logical as they appeareo be in' a simpHfied retrespe~!~:~¢cQ"unt. If is particularly ditflcuit to"emphasize adequately the often quite paralyeing=power-of . "etrtre'ficbed--c-ahl:epluatlza:ri"bns'-wTieflConfronted by new discoveries or new concepts.

Inaccuracy is also introduced by labeling certain authors as vitalists, preformationists, teleologists, saltationists, or neo-Darwinians; as if these labels would refer to homogeneous types. Actually, these categories consist of individuals no two .of whom had. exactly the same views. This is particularly true for the epithets "Lamarckians" and "neo-Lamarckians," some of whom had nothing in common with each other except a belief in an inheritance of acquired characters.

Silent Assumptions /

A further difficulty for the historian is posed by most scientists' unawareness of their own framework of ideas. They rarely articulate-if they think about it at' all:-:-what truths or concepts t~ey accept without question and what others they totally reject. , In many cases the historian can piece 'this together only by reconItructing the total intellectual milieu of the period. And yet an understanding of these silent assumptions may be necessary 'in

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THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

18

order to .answer previously puzzling questions. In science one always deals with priorities and value systems; they determine the direction of new research after a previous piece of research has been completed; they determine which theories the invesdgator is most anxious either to confirm or to refute; they also determme whether or not he considers an area of research exhausted. And yet a study of the factors that determine such priorities or value systems has been greatly neglected until now. The historian must attempt to find out what went on in the mind of a worker when he gave a new interpretation to a long familiar set of facts. It is perhaps legitimate to say that the truly crucial events in the .history of science always take place in the mind of a scientist. One must, so to speak, attempt to think as the scientist thought when he performed the work one is trying to analyze.

Most scientists tend to concentrate in their publications on new facts or rather on new discoveries, and in particular on anything that is spectacular. At the same time they usually fail to record important ongoing changes of concepts or emphasis. They may even fail to recognize such changes or may consider them as negligible even when they are aware of them. When the modern historian attempts to reconstruct such changes in past centuries, he cannot help but project into history the interests and scale of values of the present. This danger of interpretation can be minimized only if the historian is fully aware of what he is doing.

Why Study the History of Biology?

My own interest in, the history of science was aroused by reading A. O. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being, where the attempt is ma4e-and it was eminently successful-to trace the life history, so to speak, of a single idea (or a cohesive complex of ideas) from the ancients to the end of the eighteenth century. I have learned more from this one volume than from almost anything else I have read. Others who have attempted a similar approach are Ernst Cassirer and Alexander Koyre. They have provided entirely new standards for scientific historiography.

In the case of the history of science, the focal points are problems rather than ideas, but the approach of the historian of science is not much different from that of a historian.of ideas such as Lovejoy. Like Lovejoy, he attempts to trace the problem back to its beginning and to follow up its fate and its ramifications from such a beginning either to its solution or to the present time.

)

How TO WRITE HISTOR

\' BIOLOGY

It is the principal objective. of this volume. to discover for each. branch of biology and for each: period what the open problems were an~ what proposals were made to solve them; the nature of the ~om~ant concepts, their changes, and the causes' for their modification and for t~~ development. of new concepts; and fi: nal~y, what effect ~revaJ!mg or newly arising concepts had in de-' laYI?g or a~celeratmg the solution of the open problems of. the p~rIod. At Its best this approach- would portray the complete life history of each problem of biology.,-_- .

, Pre~ccupati~n with this. sort of conceptual history of science l~ som~tImes' belittled as, a hobby of retired scientists, Suchan attitude Ig~ores the manifold contributions which this branch of scholarship ,makes: The history of science, as has been pointed out frequently, Is_parncularly suitable as afirst introduction.to science. It h:lps to bn~ge the ,gap ?etween "general beliefs" and the actual findings o~ SCIence, SInce- It shows in what manner and for what ~easons SCl~nce has ~dvanced beyond the beliefs of folklore, To . Illu~tr~te this for a SIngle branch of biology; .in the history of gen:ucs it can be shown by what discoveries and arguments rather Widely, held,erro~eous beliefs were refuted" as for instance that there ,IS an inheritance of acquired: characters: that the genetic m~terIals of the parents "blend"; that the "blood" of ~ female is tam, ted so that she can never again produce "pure" off .

h h b . , sprIng once

s e ,as. een inseminated, ~ven if only a single time; that a single

egg IS SImultaneously fertilized by the sp'erm of several mal '

th t id f' . a es, or

a: acci ents 0 a pre!5n~nt mother can lead to the production of

heritable chaFac:ters. Similar erroneous beliefs, derived from folk-' lo~e: myths, rehgio)J~{docl!1ments, or fF~m early philosophies, had ongma,lly ~ee~ held m many fields of.biology. The historical demo~str~tIon of, the gradual replaceme~t of-these prescientific or early scientific b.ehe~s by be~t~r based scientific theories and concepts greatl,y assists m explaining the current .frarnework of biological

theories. - .

The layperson often ~xcuses his ignorance of science.with the tomm,ent that he finds sCle~ce too technical or too· mathematical. h et me assure the prospe~t1v: r,eader of this volume. that he will

ardly find any mathematics m rts pages and that it is not technical to, t~e ext~nt tha~. a layperson would have difficulty with th~ . exposition. It IS a maJo~ ad~antage of, 'the .history of ideas. in biology that on~ can stud~ It wltho~t a background knowledge of the name ,of a SIngle speC!~s of a':lmai or plant or of the major taxonomic groups and their classification, However, a student of the

19'

THE GROWTH OF BIOLOGICAL THOUGHT

20

history of ideas must acquire some knowledge of the dominant concepts in biology, like inheritance, program, population, variation, emergence, or organismic. It is the objective of Chapter 2 to provide an introduction. into the world of major biological concepts. Many of these concepts (and the terms that go with them) have now also been incorporated into various branches of the humanities, and it has simply become a matter of education to be acquainted with them. All of these concepts are indispensable for' an understanding of man and the world in which he lives. Any endeavor to elucidate the origin and nature of man must be based on a thorough understanding of the concepts and theories of biology. Finally, it is helpful to become familiar with a very small repertory of technical terms like gamete, zygote, species, gene, chromosome, and so on, terms that are defined in the Glossary. Yet, the total vocabulary of such technical terms is far smaller than what a student in any field of the humanities has to learn, whether it be music, 'literature, or current history.

It is not only the layperson whose horizon will be greatly extended by the study of the history of ideas in biology. Advances in many areas of biology are so precipitous at the present time that specialists can no longer keep up with developments in areas of biology outside their own. The broad survey of biology and its dominant concepts that is presented in this volume will help in filling some of the gaps. My survey is also directed toward those who have entered biology in recent years from the outside, that is, from chemistry, physics, mathematics, or other adjacent fields. The technical sophistication of these "neo-biologists" is, unfortunately, rarely matched by an equivalent conceptual sophistication .. Indeed, those who know organisms in nature and understand the' ways of evolution are often appalled by the naivete of some of the generalizations made in some papers in molecular biology. Admittedly, there is no quick and easy way to compensate for this deficiency. Like Conant, I feel that the study of the history of a field is the best way of acquiring an understanding of its concepts. Only by going over the hard way by which these concepts were worked out-by learning all the earlier wrong assumptions that had to be refuted one by one, in other words by learning all past mistakes=-can one hope to acquire a really thorough and sound understanding. In science one learns not only by one's own mis-

takes but by the.history of the mistakes of others. '

/

2 .e: The place of biology in the sciences and its conceptual structure

IT IS QUITE impossible to try to understand th d I

:;:1I~:; o~:r~~~I~~s~~~~:~e~ f~~o:~~:I~n . the hist~~y e~~ c:;:;:;;

science> What is the place f bi I these questI?ns: What is what is the conceptual struc~ur:oo?Y_ ae.o~g th~ sCIen~es? ~nd . answers have been given to all thr bI~~y, EntIre!y mIslea~Ing

~arly by philosophers and otherno:~i~Ogis:ea~~e:~Ii~b' partIc~uupeded an understanding of the growth 'of' biolozi lathS greaht y To lr t h' gica oug t,

y. 0 answer t ese baSIC questions correctl th . .

tusk of my analysis It'II'd y, en, IS the first lli(' history of specifi . WI provi e a secure basis for the study of I c concepts.

21

THE NATURE OF SCIEN.CE

"'mrn the earliest times 0 h ' .

Ilt'lgi n a~d the n:eaning of ~:::rld a:n~~;~q~~~~~~o:~o~~~~t ~~~

lIONel, HIS tentative answers can be fou d i th P

ll' f . nc in tne myths character-

" I.: () every culture even the most '"

vsnced be ond h '. " pnmItIve ones. He has ad-

dh'ec:tions \n 0 t ~~e .~mpl~ begInnmgs in two rather different p,'ocJaimed a n~ ~s ~ eas ecame formalized in religions, which W se 0 ogmas, usually based on revelation The , estern world, .for instance, at the end of the Middle A es was

~~)lbnJlfletedIYbdOmmated by an implicit trust in the teaching; of the

p '" an eyond that by a uni I b I' f i

Rh'l h ' iversa e re 1Fl the supernatural

, r I osop y and It'" . .

wlth th '. a er SCIence, IS the alternative way of dealing

e mysterIes. o.£- th,e world, although science was not stricti

.opllrlited from religion In Its early histo Sci f y

. m" ••• I ' h ry. cience con ronts these

r • r e8 WIt questions with doubts ith " .

D'llnl ',WI CUrIOSIty, and WIth ex-

PI GOry endeavors, thus with a rather different attit d f

:~~~!Ot ~'pTprhe Ph reb-Socratic .(Ionian) philosophers initiate~ t~is r~~

..... oac y searching for" t I" I .

gl' ObMervable fo f . na ura exp anatlOns, in terms

rces 0 nature, like fire, water, and air (see Chap-