Pub Date : 2023-03-21DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09714-y
William Kimler
{"title":"Joel Hagen. Life out of Balance: Homeostasis and Adaptation in a Darwinian World, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021, ISBN 9780817320898, 360 pp.","authors":"William Kimler","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09714-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09714-y","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9201590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-21DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09711-1
James Strick
{"title":"David P.D. Munns and Kärin Nickelsen. Far Beyond the Moon: A History of Life-Support Systems in the Space Age, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021, ISBN 9780822946540, 216 pp.","authors":"James Strick","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09711-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09711-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9201589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09703-1
Zina B Ward
The idea that the brain is a representational organ has roots in the nineteenth century, when neurologists began drawing conclusions about what the brain represents from clinical and experimental studies. One of the earliest controversies surrounding representation in the brain was the "muscles versus movements" debate, which concerned whether the motor cortex represents complex movements or rather fractional components of movement. Prominent thinkers weighed in on each side: neurologists John Hughlings Jackson and F.M.R. Walshe in favor of complex movements, neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington and neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in favor of movement components. This essay examines these and other brain scientists' evolving notions of representation during the first eighty years of the muscles versus movements debate (c. 1873-1954). Although participants agreed about many of the superficial features of representation, their inferences reveal deep-seated disagreements about its inferential role. Divergent epistemological commitments stoked conflicting conceptions of what representational attributions imply and what evidence supports them.
{"title":"Muscles or Movements? Representation in the Nascent Brain Sciences.","authors":"Zina B Ward","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09703-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09703-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The idea that the brain is a representational organ has roots in the nineteenth century, when neurologists began drawing conclusions about what the brain represents from clinical and experimental studies. One of the earliest controversies surrounding representation in the brain was the \"muscles versus movements\" debate, which concerned whether the motor cortex represents complex movements or rather fractional components of movement. Prominent thinkers weighed in on each side: neurologists John Hughlings Jackson and F.M.R. Walshe in favor of complex movements, neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington and neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in favor of movement components. This essay examines these and other brain scientists' evolving notions of representation during the first eighty years of the muscles versus movements debate (c. 1873-1954). Although participants agreed about many of the superficial features of representation, their inferences reveal deep-seated disagreements about its inferential role. Divergent epistemological commitments stoked conflicting conceptions of what representational attributions imply and what evidence supports them.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"5-34"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10149604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01Epub Date: 2023-03-08DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09707-x
Caden Testa
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his 'Lamarckian' belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young's signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to place Darwin's work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck's social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck's ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation.
让-巴蒂斯特-拉马克作为达尔文进化论之前的支持者是众所周知的。但是,关于拉马克、关于他对后天性格遗传的 "拉马克式 "信念以及关于他对意志在生物发展中的作用的概念的许多论著都错误地描述了他的观点。事实上,有关他对人类生理学和发育的观点的深入分析少得令人吃惊。此外,尽管自1969年罗伯特-M-杨(Robert M. Young)发表关于马尔萨斯和进化论者的重要文章以来,达尔文学者一直在努力将达尔文的研究置于其社会和政治背景中,但对于拉马克来说,这一点还没有做到位。在此,我将弥补这一空白。我认为,意志对于拉马克的社会评论以及他对法国人民和国家变革的希望尤为重要。此外,我还认为,如果我们要真正理解拉马克的思想和意图,就需要将他的作品与法国当时关于心灵和道德生理学以及国家未来的辩论联系起来。
{"title":"Species Transformation and Social Reform: The Role of the Will in Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Transformist Theory.","authors":"Caden Testa","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09707-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-023-09707-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his 'Lamarckian' belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young's signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to place Darwin's work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck's social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck's ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"125-151"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9791248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09718-8
William C. Kimler
{"title":"Correction: Joel Hagen. Life out of Balance: Homeostasis and Adaptation in a Darwinian World, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021, ISBN 9780817320898, 360 pp","authors":"William C. Kimler","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09718-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09718-8","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"195 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44169740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01Epub Date: 2023-03-21DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09705-z
Susanne S Renner, Ulrich Päßler, Pierre Moret
Alexander von Humboldt's depictions of mountain vegetation are among the most iconic nineteenth century illustrations in the biological sciences. Here we analyse the contemporary context and empirical data for all these depictions, namely the Tableau physique des Andes (1803, 1807), the Geographiae plantarum lineamenta (1815), the Tableau physique des Îles Canaries (1817), and the Esquisse de la Géographie des plantes dans les Andes de Quito (1824/1825). We show that the Tableau physique des Andes does not reflect Humboldt and Bonpland's field data and presents a flawed depiction of plant occurrences and vertical succession of vegetation belts, arising from Humboldt's misreading of La Condamine's description (1751). Humboldt's 1815 depiction, by contrast, shows a distribution of high-vegetation belts that is consistent with La Condamine's description, while the 1824 depiction drops innovations made in 1815 and returns to simply showing numerous species' names, thus not applying Humboldt's own earlier zonation framework. Our analysis of contemporary reactions to Humboldt's TPA includes Francis Hall's posthumously published 1834 illustration of Andean plant zonation near Quito and Humboldt's reaction to Hall's critique. Throughout his work on plant geography, Humboldt disregarded some of his own observations, or confused them. At stake was his reputation as an innovator in the field of plant geography and a discoverer of the sequence of high-elevation vegetation belts on the world's mountains.
亚历山大-冯-洪堡对山区植被的描绘是十九世纪生物科学领域最具代表性的插图之一。在这里,我们分析了所有这些描绘的时代背景和经验数据,即《安第斯山植被图》(Tableau physique des Andes,1803 年,1807 年)、《植物地理线图》(Geographiae plantarum lineamenta,1815 年)、《加那利群岛植被图》(Tableau physique des Îles Canaries,1817 年)和《基多安第斯山植物地理调查》(Esquisse de la Géographie des plantes dans les Andes de Quito,1824/1825 年)。我们的研究表明,《安第斯地貌图》没有反映洪堡特和邦普兰的实地数据,对植物分布和植被带垂直演替的描述存在缺陷,这是洪堡特误读拉孔达明的描述(1751 年)造成的。相比之下,洪堡在 1815 年的描述中显示的高植被带分布与拉孔达明的描述一致,而在 1824 年的描述中,洪堡放弃了 1815 年的创新,恢复了简单显示众多物种名称的做法,因此没有采用洪堡早先的分区框架。我们对洪堡 TPA 的当代反应的分析包括弗朗西斯-霍尔(Francis Hall)1834 年在基多附近追认出版的安第斯植物区系图,以及洪堡对霍尔批评的反应。在洪堡的植物地理学研究中,他忽视了自己的一些观察结果,或将其混淆。这关系到他作为植物地理学领域创新者和世界山脉高海拔植被带序列发现者的声誉。
{"title":"\"My Reputation is at Stake.\" Humboldt's Mountain Plant Geography in the Making (1803-1825).","authors":"Susanne S Renner, Ulrich Päßler, Pierre Moret","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09705-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-023-09705-z","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Alexander von Humboldt's depictions of mountain vegetation are among the most iconic nineteenth century illustrations in the biological sciences. Here we analyse the contemporary context and empirical data for all these depictions, namely the Tableau physique des Andes (1803, 1807), the Geographiae plantarum lineamenta (1815), the Tableau physique des Îles Canaries (1817), and the Esquisse de la Géographie des plantes dans les Andes de Quito (1824/1825). We show that the Tableau physique des Andes does not reflect Humboldt and Bonpland's field data and presents a flawed depiction of plant occurrences and vertical succession of vegetation belts, arising from Humboldt's misreading of La Condamine's description (1751). Humboldt's 1815 depiction, by contrast, shows a distribution of high-vegetation belts that is consistent with La Condamine's description, while the 1824 depiction drops innovations made in 1815 and returns to simply showing numerous species' names, thus not applying Humboldt's own earlier zonation framework. Our analysis of contemporary reactions to Humboldt's TPA includes Francis Hall's posthumously published 1834 illustration of Andean plant zonation near Quito and Humboldt's reaction to Hall's critique. Throughout his work on plant geography, Humboldt disregarded some of his own observations, or confused them. At stake was his reputation as an innovator in the field of plant geography and a discoverer of the sequence of high-elevation vegetation belts on the world's mountains.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"97-124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9789852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09713-z
Nicolas Rasmussen, Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
{"title":"Inaugural Editorial.","authors":"Nicolas Rasmussen, Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09713-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09713-z","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9760902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01Epub Date: 2023-03-15DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09704-0
Laura J Martin
Beginning in the nineteenth century, scientists speculated that the Pleistocene megafauna-species such as the giant ground sloth, wooly mammoth, and saber-tooth cat-perished because of rapid climate change accompanying the end of the most recent Ice Age. In the 1950s, a small network of ecologists challenged this view in collaboration with archeologists who used the new tool of radiocarbon dating. The Pleistocene overkill hypothesis imagined human hunting, not climate change, to be the primary cause of megafaunal extinction. This article situates the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis in a broader history of the emergence of historical ecology as a distinct sub-discipline of paleoecology. Tracing the work of the Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and an interdisciplinary research network that included Paul Sears, Richard Foster Flint, Edward Deevey, Kathryn Clisby, and Paul S. Martin, it reveals how both the methods and the meaning of studying fossil pollen shifted between the 1910s and 1960s. First used as a tool for fossil fuel extraction, fossil pollen became a means of envisioning climatic history, and ultimately, a means of reimagining global ecological history. First through pollen stratigraphy and then through radiocarbon dating, ecologists reconstructed past biotic communities and rethought the role of humans in these communities. By the 1980s, the discipline of historical ecology would reshape physical environments through the practice of ecological restoration.
{"title":"The Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and the Rewriting of Global Environmental History.","authors":"Laura J Martin","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09704-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-023-09704-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Beginning in the nineteenth century, scientists speculated that the Pleistocene megafauna-species such as the giant ground sloth, wooly mammoth, and saber-tooth cat-perished because of rapid climate change accompanying the end of the most recent Ice Age. In the 1950s, a small network of ecologists challenged this view in collaboration with archeologists who used the new tool of radiocarbon dating. The Pleistocene overkill hypothesis imagined human hunting, not climate change, to be the primary cause of megafaunal extinction. This article situates the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis in a broader history of the emergence of historical ecology as a distinct sub-discipline of paleoecology. Tracing the work of the Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and an interdisciplinary research network that included Paul Sears, Richard Foster Flint, Edward Deevey, Kathryn Clisby, and Paul S. Martin, it reveals how both the methods and the meaning of studying fossil pollen shifted between the 1910s and 1960s. First used as a tool for fossil fuel extraction, fossil pollen became a means of envisioning climatic history, and ultimately, a means of reimagining global ecological history. First through pollen stratigraphy and then through radiocarbon dating, ecologists reconstructed past biotic communities and rethought the role of humans in these communities. By the 1980s, the discipline of historical ecology would reshape physical environments through the practice of ecological restoration.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"35-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10164698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09708-w
Snait B Gissis
I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as 'scientific' early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim's very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument.
{"title":"The Neo-Lamarckian Tools Deployed by the Young Durkheim: 1882-1892.","authors":"Snait B Gissis","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09708-w","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09708-w","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>I argue that the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) decided to constitute sociology, a novel field, as 'scientific' early in his career. He adopted evolutionized biology as then practiced as his principal model of science, but at first wavered between alternative repertoires of concepts, models, metaphors and analogies, in particular Spencerian Lamarckism and French neo-Lamarckism. I show how Durkheim came to fashion a particular deployment of the French neo-Lamarckian repertoire. The paper describes and analyzes this repertoire and explicates how it might have been available to a non-biologist. I analyze Durkheim's very early writings between 1882 and 1892 in this context to substantiate my argument.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"153-190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10149605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01Epub Date: 2023-06-19DOI: 10.1007/s10739-023-09702-2
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
The essay offers a close reading of the inaugural address Termite Craze by the entomologist Karl Escherich, the first German university president to be appointed by the Nazis. Faced with a divided audience and under pressure to politically align the university, Escherich, a former member of the NSDAP, discusses how and to what extent the new regime can recreate the egalitarian perfection and sacrificial predisposition of a termite colony. The paper pays particular attention to the ways in which Escherich tries to appease the various factions in his audience (faculty, students and the Nazi party); in doing so, it also discusses how Escherich depicts his address in the altered versions of his later memoirs.
{"title":"The Social Politics of Karl Escherich's 1933 Inaugural Presidential Lecture.","authors":"Geoffrey Winthrop-Young","doi":"10.1007/s10739-023-09702-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-023-09702-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The essay offers a close reading of the inaugural address Termite Craze by the entomologist Karl Escherich, the first German university president to be appointed by the Nazis. Faced with a divided audience and under pressure to politically align the university, Escherich, a former member of the NSDAP, discusses how and to what extent the new regime can recreate the egalitarian perfection and sacrificial predisposition of a termite colony. The paper pays particular attention to the ways in which Escherich tries to appease the various factions in his audience (faculty, students and the Nazi party); in doing so, it also discusses how Escherich depicts his address in the altered versions of his later memoirs.</p>","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":"56 1","pages":"65-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9854791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}