The costs of being a restless intellect: Julian Huxley’s popular and scientific career in the 1920s

Julian Huxley’s (1887–1975) contribution to twentieth-century biology and science popularisation is well documented. What has not been appreciated so far is that despite Huxley’s eminence as a public scientific figure and the part that he played in the rise of experimental zoology in Britain in the 1920s, his own research was often heavily criticised in this period by his colleagues. This resulted in numerous difficulties in getting his scientific research published in the early 1920s. At this time, Huxley started his popular science career. Huxley’s friends criticised him for engaging in this actively and attributed the publication difficulties to the time that he allocated to popular science. The cause might also have its roots in his self-professed inability to delve deeply into the particularities of research. This affected Huxley’s standing in the scientific community and seems to have contributed to the fact that Huxley failed twice in the late 1920s to be elected to the Royal Society. This picture undermines to some extent Peter J. Bowler’s recent portrayal of Huxley as a science populariser.     

Naturalising purpose: From comparative anatomy to the ‘adventure of reason’

Kant’s analysis of the concept of natural purpose in the Critique of judgment captured several features of organisms that he argued warranted making them the objects of a special field of study, in need of a special regulative teleological principle. By showing that organisms have to be conceived as self-organizing wholes, epigenetically built according to the idea of a whole that we must presuppose, Kant accounted for three features of organisms conflated in the biological sciences of the period: adaptation, functionality and conservation of forms. Kant’s unitary concept of natural purpose was subsequently split in two directions: first by Cuvier’s comparative anatomy, that would draw on the idea of adaptative functions as a regulative principle for understanding in reconstituting and classifying organisms; and then by Goethe’s and Geoffroy’s morphology, a science of the general transformations of living forms. However, such general transformations in nature, objects of an alleged ‘archaeology of nature’, were thought impossible by Kant in §80 of the Critique of judgment. Goethe made this ‘adventure of reason’ possible by changing the sense of ‘explanation’: scientific explanation was shifted from the investigation of the mechanical processes of generation of individual organisms to the unveiling of some ideal transformations of types instantiated by those organisms.     

Historical Development of Origins Research

Following the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, many naturalists adopted the idea that living organisms were the historical outcome of gradual transformation of lifeless matter. These views soon merged with the developments of biochemistry and cell biology and led to proposals in which the origin of protoplasm was equated with the origin of life. The heterotrophic origin of life proposed by Oparin and Haldane in the 1920s was part of this tradition, which Oparin enriched by transforming the discussion of the emergence of the first cells into a workable multidisciplinary research program.On the other hand, the scientific trend toward understanding biological phenomena at the molecular level led authors like Troland, Muller, and others to propose that single molecules or viruses represented primordial living systems. The contrast between these opposing views on the origin of life represents not only contrasting views of the nature of life itself, but also major ideological discussions that reached a surprising intensity in the years following Stanley Miller’s seminal result which showed the ease with which organic compounds of biochemical significance could be synthesized under putative primitive conditions. In fact, during the years following the Miller experiment, attempts to understand the origin of life were strongly influenced by research on DNA replication and protein biosynthesis, and, in socio-political terms, by the atmosphere created by Cold War tensions.The catalytic versatility of RNA molecules clearly merits a critical reappraisal of Muller’s viewpoint. However, the discovery of ribozymes does not imply that autocatalytic nucleic acid molecules ready to be used as primordial genes were floating in the primitive oceans, or that the RNA world emerged completely assembled from simple precursors present in the prebiotic soup. The evidence supporting the presence of a wide range of organic molecules on the primitive Earth, including membrane-forming compounds, suggests that the evolution of membrane-bounded molecular systems preceded cellular life on our planet, and that life is the evolutionary outcome of a process, not of a single, fortuitous event.It is generally assumed that early philosophers and naturalists appealed to spontaneous generation to explain the origin of life, but in fact, the possibility of life emerging directly from nonliving matter was seen at first as a nonsexual reproductive mechanism. This changed with the transformist views developed by Erasmus Darwin, Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, and, most importantly, by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, all of whom invoked spontaneous generation as the mechanism that led to the emergence of life, and not just its reproduction. “Nature, by means of of heat, light, electricity and moisture”, wrote Lamarck in 1809, “forms direct or spontaneous generation at that extremity of each kingdom of living bodies, where the simplest of these bodies are found”.Like his predecessors, Charles Darwin surmised that plants and animals arose naturally from some primordial nonliving matter. As early as 1837 he wrote in his Second Notebook that “the intimate relation of Life with laws of chemical combination, & the universality of latter render spontaneous generation not improbable.” However, Darwin included few statements about the origin of life in his books. He avoided the issue in the Origin of Species, in which he only wrote “… I should infer from analogy that probably all organic beings which have ever lived on this Earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed” (Peretó et al. 2009).Darwin added few remarks on the origin of life his book, and his reluctance surprised many of his friends and followers. In his monograph on the radiolaria, Haeckel wrote “The chief defect of the Darwinian theory is that it throws no light on the origin of the primitive organism—probably a simple cell—from which all the others have descended. When Darwin assumes a special creative act for this first species, he is not consistent, and, I think, not quite sincere …” (Haeckel 1862).Twelve years after the first publication of the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote the now famous letter to his friend Hooker in which the idea of a “warm little pond” was included. Mailed on February 1st, 1871, it stated that “It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts—light, heat, electricity &c. present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter w^d be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.” Although Darwin refrained from any further public statements on how life may have appeared, his views established the framework that would lead to a number of attempts to explain the origin of life by introducing principles of historical explanation (Peretó et al. 2009). Here I will describe this history, and how it is guiding current research into the question of life’s origins.     

Extended knobs-into-holes packing in classical and complex coiled-coil assemblies

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Crick’s seminal paper on the packing of α-helices into coiled-coil structures. The central tenet of Crick’s work is the interdigitation of side chains, which directs the helix–helix interactions; so called knobs-into-holes packing. Subsequent determinations of coiled-coil-protein sequences and structures confirmed the key features of Crick’s model and established it as a fundamental concept in structural biology. Recently, we developed a program, SOCKET, to recognise knobs-into-holes packing in protein structures, which we applied to the Protein Data Bank to compile a database of coiled-coil structures. In addition to classic structures, the database reveals 4-helix bundles and larger helical assemblies. Here, we describe how the more-complex structures can be understood by extending Crick’s principles for classic coiled coils. In the simplest case, each helix of a 2-stranded structure contributes a single seam of (core) knobs-into-holes to the helical interface. 3-, 4-, and 5-Stranded structures, however, are best considered as rings of helices with cycles of knobs-into-holes. These higher-order oligomers make additional (peripheral) knobs-into-holes that broaden the helical contacts. Combinations of core and peripheral knobs may be assigned to different sequence repeats offset within the same helix. Such multiple repeats lead to multi-faceted helices, which explain structures above dimers. For instance, coiled-coil oligomer state correlates with the offset of the different repeats along a sequence. In addition, certain multi-helix assemblies can be considered as conjoined coiled coils in which multi-faceted helices participate in more than one coiled-coil motif.     

Methodology in Aristotle’s Theory of Spontaneous Generation

Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation offers many puzzles to those who wish to understand his theory both within the context of his biology and within the context of his more general philosophy of nature. In this paper, I approach the difficult and vague elements of Aristotle’s account of spontaneous generation not as weaknesses, but as opportunities for an interesting glimpse into the thought of an early scientist struggling to reconcile evidence and theory. The paper has two goals: (1) to give as charitable and full an account as possible of what Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation was, and to examine some of its consequences; and (2) to reflect on Aristotle as a scientist, and what his comments reveal about how he approached a difficult problem. In particular, I propose that the well-recognized problem of the incompatibility between Aristotle’s concept of spontaneity and his theory of spontaneous generation presents an opportunity for insight into his scientific methodology when approaching ill-understood phenomena.     

Dr. Haifan Lin. Interviewed by Han Lee and Rachel Rosenstein

Dr. Haifan Lin is professor of Cell Biology at Yale University, where he studies the mechanism of stem cell self-renewal in fruit flies, mice, and human cancer cells. Recently named director of the Yale Stem Cell Center, Dr. Lin has made seminal contributions to the stem cell field, most notably his demonstration of the stem cell niche theory using the fruit fly model, his discovery of the PIWI/AGO gene family that is essential for stem cell division in diverse organisms, and his recent finding of a group of small RNAs called PIWI-interacting, or piRNAs, which may play a crucial role in stem cell proliferation and germline development. Dr. Lin’s work on piRNAs was recognized by Science Magazine as a top scientific breakthrough of 2006. Recently, the Lin lab has begun exploring the role of these molecules in stem cell division and oncogenesis.     

Kant’s concept of natural purpose and the reflecting power of judgement

This paper examines how in the ‘Critique of teleological judgment’ Kant characterized the concept of natural purpose in relation to and in distinction from the concepts of nature and the concept of purpose he had developed in his other critical writings. Kant maintained that neither the principles of mechanical science nor the pure concepts of the understanding through which we determine experience in general provide adequate conceptualizations of the unique capacities of organisms. He also held that although the concept of natural purpose was derived through reflection upon an analogy to human purposive activity in artistic production and moral action, it articulates a unique notion of intrinsic purposiveness. Kant restricted his critical reflections on organisms to phenomena that can be given to us in experience, criticizing speculations on their first origins or final purpose. But I argue that he held that the concept of natural purpose is a product of the reflecting power of judgment, rather than an empirical concept, and represents only the relation of things to our power of judgment. Yet it is necessary for the identification of organisms as organized and self-organizing, and as subject to unique norms and causal relations between parts and whole.     

Single-cell recordings: a method for investigating the brain's activation pattern during exercise

The precision of human movements to generate skills as accurate as the exercises performed by athletes are the consequence of a long and complex learning process. These processes involve a great amount of the nervous system’s structures. Electrophysiological techniques have been largely used to highlight brain functions related to the control of these kinds of movements. These methods cover invasive and non-invasive techniques which have been applied to humans and experimental animals. We describe here electrophysiological techniques that are used in behaving animals. Especially, we will focus on the analysis and results obtained from single-cell recording in the prefrontal cortex to explain the relationship between single neuronal activity and movement during locomotion. In addition, we will show how, analyzing these results, that we can characterize the integrative role of neurons involved in the control of locomotion. The objective is to demonstrate single-cell recording techniques as suitable methods to study, in experimental animals, the brain’s activation pattern during exercise.     

Enrico Ferri’s Scientific Socialism: A Marxist Interpretation of Herbert Spencer’s Organic Analogy

Spencer’s evolutionary philosophy is usually identified with right-wing doctrines such as individualism, laissez-faire liberalism and even conservatism. Since he himself defended similar positions, it is perhaps not surprising that the study of the political interpretations of his ideas has drawn relatively little attention. In this article I propose to examine a rather atypical reading of Spencer’s organic analogy, though definitely not a marginal one: Enrico Ferri’s Marxist doctrine of Scientific Socialism. Ferri is not a figure unknown to scholars interested in the political aspects of the evolutionary debate. Nonetheless, the relation between his theory and Spencer’s bio-sociology – notably the complex dialectic of themes such as “the struggle for existence” versus “class struggle,” or “evolution” versus “revolution” – has not yet received full-length analysis. In my study I investigate the diffusion of Spencer’s ideas in Italy and their impact on the new “positivist” sciences of psychology and sociology inasmuch as these questions are essential to understanding Ferri’s position. Throughout, I stress the importance of the intellectual and political context in the process of appropriation of ideas that led to this unexpected shift in meaning.¹ Spencer, 1843, 1851, 1879–1893, 1884.     

Duty or dream? Edwin G. Conklin's critique of eugenics and support for American individualism

This paper assesses ideas about moral andreproductive duty in American eugenics duringthe early twentieth century. While extremeeugenicists, including Charles Davenport andPaul Popenoe, argued that social leaders andbiologists must work to prevent individuals whowere ``unfit' from reproducing, moderates,especially Edwin G. Conklin, presented adifferent view. Although he was sympathetic toeugenic goals and participated in eugenicorganizations throughout his life, Conklinrealized that eugenic ideas rarely could meetstrict scientific standards of proof. Withthis in mind, he did not restrict his eugenicvision to hereditary measures. Relying onhis experience as an embryologist, Conklininstead attempted to balance more extremeeugenic claims – that emphasized the absolutelimits posed by heredity – with his own view of``the possibilities of development.' Throughhis critique he argued that most human beingsnever even begin to approach their hereditarypotential; he moderated his own eugenicrhetoric so that it preserved individualopportunity and responsibility, or what hasoften been labeled the American Dream.     

Still going strong: Leeuwenhoek at eighty

At age 80, Antony van Leeuwenhoek was a world-famous scientist who came from a prosperous Delft family with a heritage of public service. He continued that tradition by serving in paid municipal offices. Self-taught, he began his scientific career in his 40s, when he began making hundreds of tiny single-lens microscopes. Pioneering the use of now-common microscopic techniques, he was the first human to see microbes and microscopic structures in animals, plants, and minerals. Over 50 years, he wrote only letters, more than 300 of them, and published half of them himself. More than a hundred were published in translation in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Today, Leeuwenhoek is considered in the lesser rank of scientists and is not well known outside of his homeland. Recent archival research in Delft has contributed new information about his life that helps to contextualize his science, but much remains to be learned.     

The prisoner as model organism: malaria research at Stateville Penitentiary

In a military-sponsored research project begun during the Second World War, inmates of the Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois were infected with malaria and treated with experimental drugs that sometimes had vicious side effects. They were made into reservoirs for the disease and they provided a food supply for the mosquito cultures. They acted as secretaries and technicians, recording data on one another, administering malarious mosquito bites and experimental drugs to one another, and helping decide who was admitted to the project and who became eligible for early parole as a result of his participation. Thus, the prisoners were not simply research subjects; they were deeply constitutive of the research project. Because a prisoner’s time on the project was counted as part of his sentence, and because serving on the project could shorten one’s sentence, the project must be seen as simultaneously serving the functions of research and punishment. Michel Foucault wrote about such ‘mixed mechanisms’ in his Discipline and punish. His shining example of such a ‘transparent’ and subtle style of punishment was the panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s architectural invention of prison cellblocks arrayed around a central guard tower. Stateville prison was designed on Bentham’s model; Foucault featured it in his own discussion. This paper, then, explores the power relations in this highly idiosyncratic experimental system, in which the various roles of model organism, reagent, and technician are all occupied by sentient beings who move among them fluidly. This, I argue, created an environment in the Stateville hospital wing more panoptic than that in the cellblocks. Research and punishment were completely interpenetrating, and mutually reinforcing.     

‘The vagaries of a Rafinesque’: imagining and classifying American nature

Some early nineteenth-century American naturalists condemned their contemporary, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783–1840), as ‘eccentric’, or worse. Both during his life and long after his death, his botanical work in particular was criticised, even ridiculed. However, in recent years, attempts have been made to restore his reputation and the term ‘genius’ has even been used to describe him. This paper examines this continuing fascination with this strange, disturbing figure and argues that in the competing interpretations of his life and work, Rafinesque has generally been used to typify bad classification; he is perhaps better understood in a broader, literary context as embodying a particular kind of American national identity.     

Growth and abundance of desert annuals in an arid woodland in Oman

Given the role of Scaevola plumieri as a major pioneer species in the dune environment, as well as the need forindigenous sand stabilisers for South Africa’s coastal dunes, the reproductive phenology was unravelled as a firststep to establish the potential usefulness of the species in dune stabilisation programmes. In the highly variablecoastal environment the plants must cope with many problems for successful reproduction to take place. Theplants of S. plumieri overcome these difficulties through vegetative reproduction, but sexual reproduction is byno means insignificant. Numerous peduncles, each carrying multiple buds, were produced per stem, but only fewdeveloped into ripe seeds. Several of the flowers were unfertilised and of the seeds produced many were infectedand/or aborted. There was a strong effect of dune position on the reproductive phenology of S. plumieri. Thestems situated at the landward face of the foredunes showed an overall higher reproductive performance numberof buds, flowers, unripe seeds, ripe seeds. The phenogram showed that the reproduction of stems at the landwardside of the foredunes started on average 34 days earlier and showed a tendency for a longer reproductionperiod. For the duration of the different stages in the reproduction sequence, the bud stage’ took the shortesttime and the ‘ripe seed stage’ longest time. Between the different sample years, the production of the number ofpeduncles, buds, flowers and seeds was the similar; only differences in reproduction time (duration) of the differentstages were observed for the bud, flower an unripe seeds stage between the sample years.     

Goethe's Morphology: Urphänomene and Aesthetic Appraisal

This paper examines the relationships betweenGoethe's morphology and his ideas on aestheticappraisal. Goethe's science of morphology was toprovide the method for making evident purephenomena [Urphänomene], for makingintuitable the necessary laws behind theperceptible forms and formation of livingnature, through a disciplined perception. Thisemphasis contrasted with contemporary studiesof generation, which focused upon hiddenformative processes. It was his views onaesthetic appraisal that informed theseepistemological precepts of his science. Hisstudy of antique artefacts convinced Goethethat these should be prototypes for all art,since they made perceptible the ideal of art,its archetypes or objective forms. His ambitionwas to eliminate the subjective elements hecontended were leading contemporary art astray.He argued that the techniques he developed forcultivating the perception of the idealexemplars of art could become a model forscience, enabling the intuition of theobjective forms of nature through a similardisciplined and cultivated perception. Thispaper also examines some of the widermotivations for the particular emphases Goethegave to his science and aesthetics, noting asimilar impulse to discipline unruly forces inhis life – in his work as an administrator forthe Weimar court and Jena University, in hisvision of an ideal German culture centred onthe aristocracy, and in his literaryproductions and biographical writings. Finallyit discusses the extent to which those unrulyelements nevertheless remained a potent anddisturbing presence in his understanding ofnature, his art and his life.     

Mechanical explanation of nature and its limits in Kant’s Critique of judgment

In this paper I discuss two questions. What does Kant understand by mechanical explanation in the Critique of judgment? And why does he think that mechanical explanation is the only type of the explanation of nature available to us? According to the interpretation proposed, mechanical explanations in the Critique of judgment refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Mechanical laws aim to explain nature by reference to the causal interaction between the forces of the parts of matter and the way in which they form into complex material wholes. Just like any other empirical causal law, however, mechanical laws can never be known with full certainty. The conception according to which we can explain all of nature by means of mechanical laws, it turns out, is based on what Kant calls ‘regulative’ or ‘reflective’ considerations about nature. Nothing in Kant’s Critique of judgment suggests that these considerations can ever be justified by reference to how the natural world really is. I suggest that what, upon first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature in Kant is much more limited than one might have expected.