Journal of the History of Biology最新文献

The Curious Incident of Crick in the Night-Time and Other Asilomar Enigmas.

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2025-02-26 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-025-09805-y

Matthew Cobb

{"title":"The Curious Incident of Crick in the Night-Time and Other Asilomar Enigmas.","authors":"Matthew Cobb","doi":"10.1007/s10739-025-09805-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-025-09805-y","url":null,"abstract":"In 1971, Paul Berg asked Francis Crick about his views on a controversial proposed experiment involving recombinant DNA; to Berg's surprise, Crick had no comment to make. This article first describes the multiple reasons why Crick did not respond to Berg, including psychological factors that affected Crick at the time, the limits of his unstated reflexively positivist approach to social issues, and his reluctance to pursue social or political issues when challenged. Crick's lack of involvement in discussions about recombinant DNA, including in the Asilomar process, is then used to explore two other notable absences from Asilomar: the immunologist Niels Jerne, who was invited to be on the organizing committee but was not involved for reasons that are unclear; and molecular biologist and biological weapons campaigner Matthew Meselson, whose presence would have added a layer of understanding to the discussions, particularly regarding the threat of bioweapons. These enigmatic absences raise questions about the representativeness of Asilomar and suggest future investigations as to how the legacy of Asilomar was shaped both by those who were present-and by those who were not.","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143505881","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}

引用次数: 0

Asilomar, Gene Cloning's Origins, and Its Commercial Fate.

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2025-02-18 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-025-09803-0

Doogab Yi

{"title":"Asilomar, Gene Cloning's Origins, and Its Commercial Fate.","authors":"Doogab Yi","doi":"10.1007/s10739-025-09803-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-025-09803-0","url":null,"abstract":"This paper delves into the historical development of recombinant DNA technology, examining the pivotal controversies surrounding public health and commercialization that emerged with the prospect of gene cloning in the 1970s. The analysis will focus on the recombinant DNA experiments planned, conducted, and aborted by Janet Mertz and John Morrow, two graduate students at Paul Berg's Laboratory at Stanford University. Their experiments, as I show, served as catalysts for both fear and excitement within the biomedical research community and beyond. This paper begins by reconstructing in some respects Mertz's and Morrow's investigative pathways, their contributions to technical developments in gene cloning, and their youthful perspectives on genetic engineering. While Mertz's initial experimental plan led to the establishment of the Asilomar I Conference in 1973, Morrow's subsequent cloning experiment, in collaboration with Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer, played a crucial role in shifting scientific and public sentiments around recombinant DNA, intensifying the tension between safety concerns and commercial aspirations before, during, and especially after the more famous Asilomar II Conference of 1975. The latter part of this paper briefly examines the commercial fate of early gene cloning within the context of the complex interplay between scientific advancements, societal and public health concerns, and proprietary interests that culminated in Genentech's cloning of the artificial insulin gene. This paper concludes by discussing how concerns about responsible research practices and biosafety regulation were by the late 1970s increasingly overshadowed by critiques concerning the impact of regulations and academic patenting on scientific competition and laboratory culture.","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143450908","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}

引用次数: 0

Reconsidering Utter Extinction. 重新考虑彻底灭绝。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2024-12-03 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09800-9

Mary P Winsor

引用次数: 0

A Biogeographical Debate at the Origins of Limnology in Switzerland and Italy: The Issue over Pelagic Fauna Between Pietro Pavesi and François-Alphonse Forel. 瑞士和意大利湖沼学起源时期的生物地理学辩论：Pietro Pavesi 和 François-Alphonse Forel 之间的远洋动物问题。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2024-10-16 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09791-7

Pier Luigi Pireddu

{"title":"A Biogeographical Debate at the Origins of Limnology in Switzerland and Italy: The Issue over Pelagic Fauna Between Pietro Pavesi and François-Alphonse Forel.","authors":"Pier Luigi Pireddu","doi":"10.1007/s10739-024-09791-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-024-09791-7","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the early biogeographical debates that shaped the beginning of limnology, focusing on the differences of opinion concerning the origins of pelagic fauna between two pioneering scientists: Pietro Pavesi and François-Alphonse Forel. The study examines how Pavesi's hypothesis of a marine origin for pelagic fauna contrasts with Forel's theory of passive distribution, situating their arguments within a broader Darwinian framework. The first part of the paper provides a historical overview of Italian limnology, highlighting Pavesi's contributions and interpreting Forel's writings to underscore the significance of discovering pelagic fauna in conceptualizing lakes as microcosms. The second part compares Pavesi's and Forel's hypotheses, emphasizing their impact on the scientific understanding of freshwater ecosystems. The importance of this discovery, in both historical and scientific contexts, lies in recognizing the presence of plankton in lakes as a crucial element for the mature formulation of ecological concepts, such as the ecosystem.","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":"507-532"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11754373/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142480202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

The Lady and the Plants: Two Notions of Teleology in Agnes Arber's Philosophy of Plants. 淑女与植物：阿格尼斯·阿伯《植物哲学》中的两个目的论概念。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2025-01-07 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09793-5

Vera Maximilia Straetmanns

{"title":"The Lady and the Plants: Two Notions of Teleology in Agnes Arber's Philosophy of Plants.","authors":"Vera Maximilia Straetmanns","doi":"10.1007/s10739-024-09793-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-024-09793-5","url":null,"abstract":"Agnes Arber (1879-1960) was a British plant morphologist, historian of botany, and philosopher of biology. Though now largely forgotten, her work offers valuable insights into morphological as well as philosophical issues. This paper focuses on Arber's work on teleology in plants. After providing a brief overview of her life and distinct style of work, two notions of teleology are presented, which become apparent in Arber's morphological and philosophical work. The first notion, labeled final teleology, is based on Aristotle's final cause and deals with adaptation-based explanations in biology. The second is labeled formal teleology. It is grounded in the Aristotelian formal cause and deals with the inherent directiveness of developing structures and the actualization of potentialities in organisms and their parts. Whereas Arber showed a reserved and skeptical attitude towards final teleology, she was very sympathetic to formal teleology, building her general morphological framework on it. Two examples from Arber's work are then given, which illustrate how formal teleology informed her theorizing: the partial-shoot theory of the leaf, and parallelism in evolution as a counter-proposal to natural selection. Finally, Arber's teleological interpretation of plant morphology is historically contextualized and connected to recent research developments in evolutionary biology and plant morphology.","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":"533-555"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11754319/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

How to Civilize Elites: Controlling "Foreign Scientists" at a Field Station in the Galápagos Islands. 如何教化精英：在Galápagos群岛的一个野外站控制“外国科学家”。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2025-01-10 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09801-8

M Susan Lindee

{"title":"How to Civilize Elites: Controlling \"Foreign Scientists\" at a Field Station in the Galápagos Islands.","authors":"M Susan Lindee","doi":"10.1007/s10739-024-09801-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10739-024-09801-8","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the control of visiting \"foreign scientists\" at the Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS) after it was established in the Galápagos Islands in 1959. Scholarly accounts of the creation of the Galápagos National Park and of the field station have emphasized their place in an international \"land grab,\" as leading scientists and conservationists sought to control nature in places around the world that seemed less \"civilized\" to European thinkers. The actual administrative labor in the early years at this scientific field station, however, in practice struggled to control people widely taken to represent \"civilization\" in its highest form-European and American scientists. At the research station, European and American (but not Ecuadorian) scientists were the focus of a delicate choreography of discipline and acquiescence, as scientists were courted and refused, welcomed and limited, chastised and supported. Meanwhile CDRS fund-raising appeals promised that the station would control island residents, fishing crews, and invasive species. Such appeals did not mention controlling elite field scientists. Existing historiography has stressed how Western scientists were privileged actors in non-Western nature reserves and parks, their privileges coming at the expense of local communities. But scientists too faced new (quietly implemented) constraints as post-war conservation programs developed, and achieving their compliance with these new rules involved a process I call here \"civilizing\" elites.","PeriodicalId":51104,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the History of Biology","volume":" ","pages":"581-602"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11754305/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142958537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Alfred Russel Wallace's Darwinian Opposition to Eugenics. 阿尔弗雷德-拉塞尔-华莱士的达尔文主义反对优生学。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2024-11-15 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09792-6

David Stack

引用次数: 0

Darwin's "Dark Matter" and the History of Biology: An Editorial Introduction. 达尔文的 "暗物质 "与生物学史：编辑导言》。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-12-01 Epub Date: 2024-11-25 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09799-z

Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis

引用次数: 0

James T. Costa, Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023, ISBN: 9780691233796, 515 pp. 詹姆斯·t·科斯塔，《天生激进：阿尔弗雷德·拉塞尔·华莱士的革命生活》，普林斯顿：普林斯顿大学出版社，2023年，ISBN: 9780691233796, 515页。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-11-29 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09794-4

Martin Fichman

引用次数: 0

Marianne Sommer, The Diagrammatics of 'Race:' Visualizing Human Relatedness in the History of Physical, Evolutionary, and Genetic Anthropology, ca. 1770-2020, Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2024, ISBN: 9781805112655. 玛丽安·索默，《种族的图解：在身体、进化和遗传人类学的历史上可视化人类关系》，约1770-2020，剑桥，英国：开放图书出版社，2024,ISBN: 9781805112655。

IF 0.7 1区哲学

Journal of the History of Biology Pub Date : 2024-11-29 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-024-09798-0

Jonathan Marks

引用次数: 0