Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Many scientists and philosophers of science are troubled by the relative isolation of developmental from evolutionary biology. Reconciling the science of development with the science of heredity preoccupied a minority of biologists for much of the twentieth century, but these efforts were not corporately successful. Mainly in the past fifteen years, however, these previously dispersed integrating programmes have been themselves synthesized and so reinvigorated. Two of these more recent synthesizing endeavours are evolutionary developmental biology (EDB, or "evo-devo") and developmental systems theory (DST). While the former is a bourgeoning and scientifically well-respected biological discipline, the same cannot be said of DST, which is virtually unknown among biologists. In this review, we provide overviews of DST and EDB, summarize their key tenets, examine how they relate to one another and to the study of epigenetics, and survey the impact that DST and EDB have had (and in future should have) on biological theory and practice.

Literally speaking, "Philosophy of biology" is a rather old expression. William Whewell coined it in 1840, at the very time he introduced the expression "philosophy of science". Whewell was fond of creating neologisms, like Auguste Comte, his French counterpart in the field of the philosophical reflection about science. Historians of science know that a few years earlier, in 1834, Whewell had generated a small scandal when he proposed the word "scientist" as a general term by which "the students of the knowledge of the material world" could describe themselves, and distinguish themselves from artists. The term "philosopher", Whewell argued, was too wide. A new generic term, more or less equivalent to the French term "savant", was needed in order to prevent the disintegration of science that seemed to flow from its specialization in modern times.1 When Whewell first introduced the terms "philosophy of science" and "philosophy of biology" in his 1840 Philosophy of the inductive sciences, the latter term was merely a special branch of "philosophy of science". The expression "philosophy of science" itself had two justifications: firstly, this phrase expressed the idea that "science" remained cognitively coherent enough to justify a critical enquiry into its methodological unity and its foundation; secondly, the phrase "philosophy of science" was required in order to distinguish a properly "philosophical" enquiry from a "historical" approach to science. Although Whewell's 1840 Philosophy of the inductive sciences 2 had approximately the same chapter structure as his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences 3 (that is, a series of chapters successively devoted to the concept of science in general, and although there was considerable overlap between the contents of the two books, then to particular sciences), its theoretical purpose was different. Clearly, Whewell was not willing to confuse the genres of history and philosophy as Auguste Comte had done in his 1830 Cours de philosophie positive.4 Note also that the word "biology" was still extremely rare in English when Whewell used it in 1840. In fact, Whewell's 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences does not make use of the word "biology": Whewell successively examines "botany", "zoology", "physiology" and "comparative antomy" as special branches of "analytico-classificatory science", then discusses palaeontology as a special case of the "palaeo-etiological sciences". Three years later, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Whewell does use "biology" as a generic term for all the sciences dealing with life. The various sciences which were separately examined in the previous book are now collectively considered. Furthermore, the main philosophical problem raised by biology is its dual nature: biology is both nomological and a historical science. Modern philosophers of biology are generally unaware of the story of the origins of the expression "philosophy of biology", but Whewell's dual theoretical nature of biology is still a major concern for modern "philosophy of biology".

Notes on Contributors

Introduction to the Symposium on Synthetic Life Alan N. Schechter, Editor On behalf of the editors of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, I am pleased to introduce the editors and venue of the Symposium on Synthetic Life: Scientific, Historical, and Ethical Perspectives, which occupies much of the current issue of our journal. We are very pleased that Professors Ute Deichmann, Michel Morange, and Anthony S. Travis planned, organized, and edited the proceedings of the workshop on this topic, held on March 5-6, 2012, at the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences and the NIBN at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel. Professor Deichmann has been the founding director of the Centre since it was created in 2007. Although she trained in biology in Germany, most of her career has been devoted to the history of fundamental life science research during the last century, especially in Europe and including the dreadful periods before and during the Second World War. The Centre (as described in a bit more detail below) has become one of the few institutions in the world devoted to a systematic study of the transformations during the last century of those aspects of biology that might in their entirety be termed molecular biology. On the most general level, these transformations occurred in the context of the transition from the vague colloid theories at the beginning of the last century to analyses of specific molecules during the last several decades. Indeed, to understand the origins of molecular biology, and thus much of the current excitement in the life sciences and even medicine, one must know the several threads of structural and genetic analyses that came together as molecular biology in the mid-1950s and that have flourished since. It is the thesis of the symposium presented in the papers in this issue of Perspectives that further philosophical syntheses are now underway, including with synthetic chemistry to create the fields of synthetic biology and even synthetic life. This is analogous to the syntheses occurring with physiology that have led to what is generally termed systems biology. Professor Morange is Professor of Biology and Director of the Centre Cavaillès for history and philosophy of science at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in [End Page 467] Paris, and was trained initially in molecular biology. In the last two decades he has published several very well received books on the history of molecular biology, especially of the concept of genes, and on the history of science more generally. Professor Travis is interested in the history of chemistry and technology and has long been associated with the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Jacques Loeb Centre, and the Leo Baeck Institute in London. Thus the three editors bring very important and complementary perspectives to these issues. The Jacques Loeb Centre (http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/loeb/Pages/default.aspx) honors in its name the German-American physiologist who lived from 1859 to 1924 and from whom Professor Deichmann and her colleagues rightly trace the concepts that were the fundamental basis of the application of physical-chemical ideas and methods to biology during the last century. This work led to the complete replacement of the vitalistic approaches with the mechanistic tradition that we now accept with few second thoughts in fields ranging from evolution to medicine. In her writings, and in the focus of the work of the Centre, Professor Deichmann has traced the specific questions and controversies that constitute this history, including in the work of other pioneers, especially during the first half of the last century. Her paper on the contributions of Leonor Michaelis during this period is published as a special addition to this issue of Perspectives. The workshop proceedings published here are the fifth in a yearly series at the Centre. The titles of the others will give an idea of the scope of their enterprise: Philosophies in Biology (2008); Darwinism and Functional Biology, Other Sciences, and the Humanities (2009); Evolutionary-Developmental Biology: The Evolution of the Fields and Prospects for Future Developments (2010...

A large body of work in science education indicates that evolution is one of the least understood and accepted scientific theories. Although scholarship from the history and philosophy of science (HPS) has shed light on many conceptual and pedagogical issues in evolution education, HPS-informed studies of evolution education are also characterized by conceptual weaknesses. In this chapter, we critically review such studies and find that some work lacks historically accurate characterizations of student ideas (preconceptions and misconceptions). In addition, although several studies in the science education literature have drawn parallels between students’ conceptual change patterns and those from the history of science (HOS), we identify several issues that complicate the characterization of student ideas as “Lamarckian” or “Darwinian.” Finally, a review of the topic of explanation illustrates how the plurality of approaches employed in evolutionary biology is not reflected in evolution education scholarship or practice. This finding is particularly concerning given the recent shift in emphasis in science education standards to teaching content through practice-based tasks (e.g., explanation and argumentation). Overall, this chapter demonstrates that while HPS is of central importance to a deep understanding of evolution education, too often its contributions are poorly realized.

The relationship between the history and philosophy of engineering is similar to that between the history and philosophy of science and that between the history and philosophy of technology. Lakatos’ thesis—that “philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind”—applies as well to the history and philosophy of engineering. To advance the history of engineering requires some attention to the nature of engineering and vice versa. The effort here is to draw some lines of demarcation among the histories of engineering, of technology, of science, and of economics from a philosophical point view. With regard to history, a theory of engineering evolution can bridge philosophy and history; an important part of such an evolution will also consider historical developments in the engineering community. There nevertheless remain important tensions and complementarities between the history and philosophy of engineering.

Previous articleNext article FreeNotes on ContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHarold J. Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University and was previously Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. Recipient of the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society and the Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine, he is author of five books and coeditor of six others, together with well over sixty articles. His primary research interests are in the emergence of the new medicines and sciences of early modern Europe; global knowledge exchanges; the coproduction of science and commerce; and processes of translation.William Deringer is Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research excavates the history of economic and political knowledge practices. His first book, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Cambridge, Mass., 2018), reconstructs how numerical calculation became an authoritative mode of public reasoning in Anglophone political culture. His new project, Discounting: A History of the Economic Future (in One Calculation), traces “present value” calculations from their early modern beginnings to contemporary debates about climate change.Julia Fein is a historian of Modern Russia, specializing in the intersecting histories of science and empire. She spent two years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Associate at Rutgers University, where she was affiliated with the “Networks of Exchange” seminar at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She has also taught modern European history at Macalester College.Courtney Fullilove is Associate Professor of History, Environmental Studies, and Science in Society at Wesleyan University. She is the author of The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (Chicago, 2017) and of articles on claims to natural and cultural heritage. She is currently writing a history of international biodiversity preservation.Arunabh Ghosh is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Harvard University. A historian of modern China, his interests include social and economic history, history of science and statecraft, and transnational history. His book, Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early PRC, 1949–1959, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Articles have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, BJHS-Themes, and the PRC History Review. He is currently working on two new projects: a history of Chinese dam building in the twentieth century and a history of China-India scientific networks, ca. 1900–1960.Martin Giraudeau is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Sciences Po, in Paris, and a researcher in the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has published articles on the history of business plans, the invention of entrepreneurship, and the roles of accounting in organizations and society. He recently coedited, with Frédéric Graber, a volume on the modern history of projects: Les Projets: Une histoire politique (16e–21e siècles) (Paris, 2018).Eugenia Lean is Associate Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is the author of Public Passions: The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2007). Her forthcoming book, Manufacturing China’s Vernacular Industrialism: Nativist Tinkerer and Toothpowder Magnate, Chen Diexian (1879–1940), employs the figure of Chen Diexian, a professional editor, science enthusiast, and pharmaceutical industrialist, to examine the practices of nativist tinkering, innovative adaptation, and knowledge work in the building of early twentieth-century Chinese industry. Her latest research examines China’s involvement in shaping modern global regimes of intellectual property from the early twentieth to twenty-first centuries.Victoria Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Ohio University, where she teaches and writes about modern science and technology. She is currently writing a book about Japanese society’s engagement with microbes in science, industry, and environmental management. She has published in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (ed. Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland), and Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.Paul Lucier is a historian of science, business, and the environment. He is the author of Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890 (Baltimore, 2008) and is currently finishing a book on the geology of gold, silver, and copper mining in the American West. The goal of his research is to understand whether and how science-driven capitalism can be ethical, innovative, intellectually creative, and environmentally responsible.Sarah Milov is Assistant Professor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. Her first book, Smoke and Ashes: From Corporatism to Neoliberalism in Tobacco’s Twentieth Century, is forthcoming. Her recent research focuses on whistle-blowing, particularly the relationship among gender, credibility, and bureaucracy.Emily Pawley is Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College, where she teaches environmental history, the history of capitalism, and the history of science. Her research focuses on cultivated landscapes as sources of knowledge; recent publications examine analytic tables and the invention of nutritional value, cattle portraiture and markets in blood, and varietal description and counterfeit fruit. Her book project, the Balance-Sheet of Nature: Agriculture and Speculative Science in the Antebellum North, examines the kinds of speculative and futuristic knowledge that emerged to make sense of the rapidly commercializing landscape of post–Erie Canal New York and is under advance contract at the University of Chicago Press. She is also interested in the transatlantic history of moon farming.Lukas Rieppel is David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, where he teaches courses on the history of science and the history of capitalism. His forthcoming book, Assembling the Dinosaur, uses the history of paleontology as a means to examine how the ideals, norms, and practices of modern capitalism shaped the way scientific knowledge was made, certified, and distributed during North America’s Long Gilded Age. In addition, Rieppel has written several essays about the material culture of the earth sciences, the history of museums, the valuation of fossils, and the authentication of specimens.David Singerman is Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Virginia. His work has appeared in Radical History Review, the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the Journal of British Studies. He has also written on the sugar industry for the New York Times and on U.S.-Canada trade wars for The Atlantic.Hallam Stevens is Associate Professor of History and Biology and the Head of History at the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013), Biotechnology and Society: An Introduction (Chicago, 2016), and the coeditor of Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome (Durham, N.C., 2015).Lee Vinsel is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, where he teaches and writes about government and technology. He is a cofounder of The Maintainers, a global, interdisciplinary research network that studies maintenance, repair, and mundane work with things. His forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press examines the history of automobile regulation in the United States from 1893 to today’s dreams of a driverless future. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Osiris Volume 33, Number 12018Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories Published for the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700195 © 2018 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview ArticlesHISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP OR MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE?RONALD N. GIERERONALD N. GIEREDepartment of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 24, Number 3September 1973 Society: The British Society for the Philosophy of Science Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/24.3.282 Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 7Citations are reported from Crossref © 1973 by The Author. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: By Alan Richardson Scientific Philosophy as a Topic for History of Science Alan Richardson, Isis 99, no.11 (Jul 2015): 88–96.https://doi.org/10.1086/587534 Ronald N. Giere Philosophy of Science Naturalized, Philosophy of Science 52, no.33 (Oct 2015): 331–356.https://doi.org/10.1086/289255 Stephen J. Wykstra Toward a Historical Meta-Method for Assessing Normative Methodologies: Rationability, Serendipity, and the Robinson Crusoe Fallacy, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980, no.11 (Oct 2015): 211–222.https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1980.1.192566 James Robert Brown History and the Norms of Science, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980, no.11 (Oct 2015): 236–248.https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1980.1.192568 Richard M. Burian More than a Marriage of Convenience: On the Inextricability of History and Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science 44, no.11 (Oct 2015): 1–42.https://doi.org/10.1086/288722 Nancy L. Maull Reconstructed Science as Philosophical Evidence, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1976, no.11 (Oct 2015): 119–129.https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1976.1.192355 Ernan McMullin History and Philosophy of Science: A Marriage of Convenience?, PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1974 (Sep 2015): 585–601.https://doi.org/10.1086/psaprocbienmeetp.1974.495828

I shall attempt to demonstrate here that the general categories of hermeneutics can be applied just as well to the natural sciences as to the humanities, and I shall explore the implications of this demonstration for both types of disciplines. In doing so, it will be necessary for me to raise some unfashionable issues about the objectivity and rationality of critical interpretations, and, as a result, I may appear to be cast in the role of advocatus diaboli. The value of lowering the critical barriers that have been set up between the human and natural sciences, however, will outweigh any incidental paradoxes that may crop up en route.

Previous articleNext article FreeSynthetic Bibliography, with Special Reference to the History of ScienceGeorge SartonGeorge Sarton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 3, Number 2Autumn, 1920 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/357911 Views: 103Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcel Martin George Sarton (1884-1956): the Founder of the History of Science Branch, Historica Olomucensia 53, no.vol. 53vol. 53 (Dec 2017): 273–320.https://doi.org/10.5507/ho.2017.036 Herman H. Henkle Content and the Curriculum in Education for Librarianship, The Library Quarterly 12, no.11 (Sep 2015): 29–48.https://doi.org/10.1086/615103 George Sarton Sixteenth Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization, Isis 7, no.22 (Oct 2015): 171–352.https://doi.org/10.1086/358324 George Sarton Ninth Critical Bibliography of the History, Philosophy and Organization of Science and of the History of Civilization, Isis 3, no.33 (Oct 2015): 451–497.https://doi.org/10.1086/357970

Misunderstanding of phenomenology and positivism as perspectives upon the philosophy and practice of science has important implications for the future of geographic research and research funding in America. Positivistic perspectives on the philosophy of science appear to be seen as fundable, whereas the scientific status and the possibilities for funding of phenomenological and other perspectives on the philosophy of science seem to be in question.

“Theoretical biology” is a surprisingly heterogeneous field, partly because it encompasses “doing theory” across disciplines as diverse as molecular biology, systematics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Moreover, it is done in a stunning variety of different ways, using anything from formal analytical models to computer simulations, from graphic representations to verbal arguments. In this essay I survey a number of aspects of what it means to do theoretical biology, and how they compare with the allegedly much more restricted sense of theory in the physical sciences. I also tackle a recent trend toward the presentation of all-encompassing theories in the biological sciences, from general theories of ecology to a recent attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the entire set of biological disciplines. Finally, I discuss the roles played by philosophers of science in criticizing and shaping biological theorizing.