An Issue of Originality and Priority: The Correspondence and Theories of Oxidative Phosphorylation of Peter Mitchell and Robert J.P. Williams, 1961–1980

In the same year, 1961, Peter D. Mitchell and Robert R.J.P. Williams both put forward hypotheses for the mechanism of oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria and photophosphorylation in chloroplasts. Mitchell’s proposal was ultimately adopted and became known as the chemiosmotic theory. Both hypotheses were based on protons and differed markedly from the then prevailing chemical theory originally proposed by E.C. (Bill) Slater in 1953, which by 1961 was failing to account for a number of experimental observations. Immediately following the publication of Williams’s hypothesis and before his own was published, Mitchell initiated a correspondence. Examination of the letters shows the development of a dispute based on the validity of the proposals, who should have priority and particularly whether Mitchell had drawn on Williams’s work without acknowledgement. We have concluded that Mitchell’s proposals were original (a view still questioned by Williams) although it is evident that prior to the correspondence Williams had considered and rejected a proposition similar to Mitchell’s theory. However, a major cause of the dispute was the difference in disciplinary backgrounds of Mitchell, a microbial biochemist and Williams, a chemist.     

The Charms of Nature: Darwin on Meaning and Value

I review George Levine’s provocative and highly original book Darwin Loves You. Levine, whose “home discipline” is English Literature, offers a compelling interpretation of Darwin’s works, evaluating their content and Darwin’s prose style to identify a distinctly Darwinian attitude toward nature as a source of meaning and value. Levine believes that Darwin exemplifies the capacity to feel “enchantment” about the natural world, suggesting that, if Darwin’s example were followed, a “Darwinian re-enchantment of the world” would be brought about. This would offer a secular, non-supernatural basis for purpose, meaning, and value. I conclude with a few critical remarks about the scope and cogency of Levine’s proposal.     

Sober &; Wilson’s evolutionary arguments for psychological altruism: a reassessment

In their book Unto Others, Sober and Wilson argue that various evolutionary considerations (based on the logic of natural selection) lend support to the truth of psychological altruism. However, recently, Stephen Stich has raised a number of challenges to their reasoning: in particular, he claims that three out of the four evolutionary arguments they give are internally unconvincing, and that the one that is initially plausible fails to take into account recent findings from cognitive science and thus leaves open a number of egoistic responses. These challenges make it necessary to reassess the plausibility of Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary account—which is what I aim to do in this paper. In particular, I try to show that, as a matter of fact, Sober & Wilson’s case remains compelling, as some of Stich’s concerns rest on a confusion, and those that do not are not sufficiently strong to establish all the conclusions he is after. The upshot is that no reason has been given to abandon the view that evolutionary theory has advanced the debate surrounding psychological altruism.     

Samir Okasha: Evolution and the levels of selection

The debate about the levels of selection has been one of the most controversial both in evolutionary biology and in philosophy of science. Okasha’s book makes the sort of contribution that simply will not be able to be ignored by anyone interested in this field for many years to come. However, my interest here is in highlighting some examples of how Okasha goes about discussing his material to suggest that his book is part of an increasingly interesting trend that sees scientists and philosophers coming together to build a broadened concept of “theory” through a combination of standard mathematical treatments and conceptual analyses. Given the often contentious history of the relationship between philosophy and science, such trend cannot but be welcome.     

Guessing the future of the past

I review the book “Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate” by Derek Turner. Turner suggests that philsophers should take seriously the historical sciences such as geology when considering philosophy of science issues. To that end, he explores the scientific realism debate with the historical sciences in mind. His conclusion is a view allied to that of Arthur Fine: a view Turner calls the natural historical attitude. While I find Turner’s motivations good, I find his characterisation of the historical sciences unconvincing. I say why in a section at the end of the review. The result is that I am unpersuaded by his thesis.     

Wimsatt and the robustness family: Review of Wimsatt’s Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings

This review of Wimsatt’s book “Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings” focuses on analysing his use of robustness, a central theme in the book. I outline a family of three distinct conceptions of robustness that appear in the book, and look at the different roles they play. I briefly examine what underwrites robustness, and suggest that further work is needed to clarify both the structure of robustness and the relation between it various conceptions.     

Sacred Conceptions: Clinical Theodicies, Uncertain Science, And Technologies Of Procreation In India

This article argues that the rapid transfer of assisted conception technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, to India is not restricted merely to the modalities of offering potential biomedical resolution of infertility but includes, more crucially, how clinicians and infertile consumers assimilate the “Western technoscience” of conception. The article draws on a larger multisite ethnographic study of infertility and assisted conception in India’s five major cities and is principally based on narratives of clinicians and infertile couples and on clinic-based ethnographic observations. In this article I contend that the success or failure of assisted conception, when situated in the universe of Hindu faith, becomes a powerful critique of the “incompleteness” of the “Western” science of conception. Situating this contention in the broader context of a clinician’s faith, I assert that assisted conception—by conjoining seemingly disparate domains of the traditional and the modern, the sacred and the profane, the human and the superhuman, science and religion—produces clinical theodicies that help explain and contain the tentativeness permeating the conception technologies. The article concludes by arguing that this enchanted version of a thoroughly disenchanted worldview of biomedicine is part of a larger cultural process of indigenization of biomedicine in India.     

Edmund Vincent Cowdry and the Making of Gerontology as a Multidisciplinary Scientific Field in the United States

The Canadian–American biologist Edmund Vincent Cowdry played an important role in the birth and development of the science of aging, gerontology. In particular, he contributed to the growth of gerontology as a multidisciplinary scientific field in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. With the support of the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, he organized the first scientific conference on aging at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where scientists from various fields gathered to discuss aging as a scientific research topic. He also edited Problems of Ageing (1939), the first handbook on the current state of aging research, to which specialists from diverse disciplines contributed. The authors of this book eventually formed the Gerontological Society in 1945 as a multidisciplinary scientific organization, and some of its members, under Cowdry’s leadership, formed the International Association of Gerontology in 1950. This article historically traces this development by focusing on Cowdry’s ideas and activities. I argue that the social and economic turmoil during the Great Depression along with Cowdry’s training and experience as a biologist – cytologist in particular – and as a textbook editor became an important basis of his efforts to construct gerontology in this direction.     

A gene’s eye view of Darwinian populations

Biologists and philosophers differ on whether selection should be analyzed at the level of the gene or of the individual. In Peter Godfrey-Smith’s book, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection, he argues that individuals can be good members of Darwinian populations, whereas genes rarely can. I take issue with parts of this view, and suggest that Godfrey-Smith’s scheme for thinking about Darwinian populations is also applicable to populations of genes.     

Capitalist Contexts for Darwinian Theory: Land, Finance, Industry and Empire

When socio-economic contexts are sought for Darwin’s science, it is customary to turn to the Industrial Revolution. However, important issues about the long run of England’s capitalisms can only be recognised by taking a wider view than Industrial Revolution historiographies tend to engage. The role of land and finance capitalisms in the development of the empire is one such issue. If we historians of Darwin’s science allow ourselves a distinction between land and finance capitalisms on the one hand and industrial capitalism on the other; and if we ask with which side of this divide were Darwin and his theory of branching descent by natural selection aligned, then reflection on leading features of that theory, including its Malthusian elements, suggests that the answer is often and largely, though not exclusively: on the land side. The case of Wallace, socialist opponent of land capitalism, may not be as anomalous for this suggestion as one might at first think. Social and economic historians have reached no settled consensuses on the long-run of England’s capitalisms. We historians of Darwin’s science would do well to import some of these unsettled states of discussion into our own work over the years to come.     

When Your Sources Talk Back: Toward a Multimodal Approach to Scientific Biography

Interviewing offers the biographer unique opportunities for gathering data. I offer three examples. The emphatic bacterial geneticist Norton Zinder confronted me with an interpretation of Barbara McClintock’s science that was as surprising as it proved to be robust. The relaxed setting of the human geneticist Walter Nance’s rural summer home contributed to an unusually improvisational oral history that produced insights into his experimental and thinking style. And “embedding” myself with the biochemical geneticist Charles Scriver in his home, workplace, and city enabled me to experience the social networks that drive the practical events of his career, which in turn helped me explain the theoretical basis of his science. Face-to-face interaction and multisensory experience will shape each biographer’s experience uniquely. Recent developments in sensory physiology suggest that the experience of integrating sense data encourages different patterns of observation and reflection. It is reasonable, then, to think that biography based on face-to-face interviews will, for a given author, have a different character than one based entirely on documents. I reflect on how interviewing shapes my own writing and I encourage the reader to do the same.     

Erich Wasmann, Ernst Haeckel, and the limits of science

Summary In the late nineteenth century, two German evolutionary biologists, Ernst Haeckel and Erich Wasmann, argued publicly about how to apply evolutionary biology and where its explanatory limits, if any, lay. The German Jesuit evolutionist entomologist Wasmann’s (1859–1931) faith and Jesuit philosophical training intersected to reconcile evolution and Catholicism by delineating the philosophical limits of science: Wasmann demarcated a material and historical world, which science can describe, and the realm of subjective experience and the soul, which it cannot. Wasmann’s evolution contrasted (and conflicted) strongly with contemporary German atheistic and anticlerical monistic evolutionary biology. This paper discusses Wasmann’s very public debates with monism’s prophet, Ernst Haeckel.     

Maximizing biodiversity, information and sustainability

Numerous global changes—notably anthropogenic extinction—force reconsideration of our management practices and the ways we regulate human influence in today’s world. Here, I define management to maximize biodiversity and illustrate the science that provides information to set goals for such management. Maximizing biodiversity simultaneously achieves sustainability and systemic health by avoiding the abnormal or pathological. The normal or sustainable are determined through the use of empirical integrative patterns to objectively account for the complexity of systems within which we find ourselves as a species. The science that reveals these integrative patterns provides measures of problems that can be solved by maximizing biodiversity—problems heretofore recognized only qualitatively. I use the Shannon-Weiner information index to test, and, with no surprise, reject the null hypothesis that there is no direct anthropogenic effect on biodiversity. The results of this science serve as examples of the kind of information most useful for guiding management and illustrate maximized biodiversity as a standard for management. Reference points based on maximized biodiversity are preferable to statistical parameters in meeting the objective of avoiding the abnormal or pathological in our interactions with other species, ecosystems and the biosphere. Management to maximize biodiversity is implemented by modifying human interactions with other biotic systems to achieve consistency in such interactions by mimicking natural role models of sustainability. Human influence is a significant factor in today’s world and the magnitude of such influence is illustrated by comparing humans with other species.     

Carl F. Craver, Explaining what? Review of explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience

Carl Craver’s recent book offers an account of the explanatory and theoretical structure of neuroscience. It depicts it as centered around the idea of achieving mechanistic understanding, i.e., obtaining knowledge of how a set of underlying components interacts to produce a given function of the brain. Its core account of mechanistic explanation and relevance is causal-manipulationist in spirit, and offers substantial insight into casual explanation in brain science and the associated notion of levels of explanation. However, the focus on mechanistic explanation leaves some open questions regarding the role of computation and cognition.     

Controlling Life: From Jacques Loeb to Regenerative Medicine

In his 1987 book Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, Philip Pauly presented his readers with the biologist Jacques Loeb and his role in developing an emphasis on control of life processes. Loeb’s work on artificial parthenogenesis, for example, provided an example of bioengineering at work. This paper revisits Pauly’s study of Loeb and explores the way current research in regenerative medicine reflects the same tradition. A history of regeneration research reveals patterns of thinking and research methods that both echo Loeb’s ideology and point the way to modern studies. Pauly’s work revealed far more than we readers realized at the time of its publication.     

John Maynard Smith and the natural philosophy of␣adaptation

One of the most remarkable aspects of John Maynard Smith’s work was the fact that he devoted time both to doing science and to reflecting philosophically upon its methods and concepts. In this paper I offer a philosophical analysis of Maynard Smith’s approach to modelling phenotypic evolution in relation to three main themes. The first concerns the type of scientific understanding that ESS and optimality models give us. The second concerns the causal–historical aspect of stability analyses of adaptation. The third concerns the concept of evolutionary stability itself. Taken together, these three themes comprise what I call the natural philosophy of adaptation.     

Insect conservation in Michigan prairie fen: addressing the challenge of global change

Prairie fen is a globally rare, groundwater dependent peatland community restricted to discrete portions of the glaciated north central USA. Prairie fen harbours a diverse flora composed of sedge wetland and tallgrass prairie species, which in turn support a diversity of rare insects. In Michigan, USA over 20% of the state’s insects of conservation concern are associated with prairie fen, including the globally imperilled Mitchell’s satyr butterfly, Neonympha mitchellii mitchellii (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Here we investigate how global change drivers, including land use change, climate change, and invasive species, may interact to threaten this important community. Specifically, we examine how characteristics of prairie fen habitats—e.g., formation and distribution—interact with the biology of rare fen insects to suggest appropriate short to long term conservation strategies. Our results suggest that prairie fen associated insects are rare for a variety of reasons, including host plant specialization, habitat specialization, and shifting landscape context that limits opportunities for dispersal. We recommend that current conservation efforts focus on stabilization and restoration of existing prairie fens, coupled with directed surveys to monitor population change in insects of concern, and restoration of the landscape matrix to facilitate metapopulation dynamics. In the future, due to the severely fragmented nature of Michigan landscapes, captive rearing and assisted migration may be necessary to conserve some prairie fen insect species. Overall, the effective conservation of fen associated insects will require a shared vision by multiple actors and a willingness to purse that vision over a long time frame.     

Reports from the high table

David Sepkoski and Michael Ruse’s edited collection The Peolobiological Revolution covers the changes in paleontological science in the last half-century. The collection should be of interest to philosophers of science (particularly those interested in non-reductive unity) as well as historians. I give an overview of the content and major themes of the volume and draw some lessons for the philosophy of science along the way. In particular, I argue that the history of paleontology demands a new approach to philosophical delineation of sciences.     

Science through the internet: Researching, evaluating and citing websites

This article attempts to convey the joys and frustrations of skimming the Internet trying to find relevant information concerning an academic’s work as a scientist, a student or an instructor. A brief overview of the Internet and the “do’s and don’ts” for the neophyte as well for the more seasoned “navigator” are given. Some guidelines of “what works and what does not” and “what is out there” are provided for the scientist with specific emphasis for biologists, as well as for all others having an interest in science but with little interest in spending countless hours “surfing the net”. An extensive but not exhaustive list of related websites is provided.     

Galactose metabolism in cell walls of opening and senescing petunia petals

Galactose was the major non-cellulosic neutral sugar present in the cell walls of ‘Mitchell’ petunia (Petunia axillaris × P. axillaris × P. hybrida) flower petals. Over the 24 h period associated with flower opening, there was a doubling of the galactose content of polymers strongly associated with cellulose and insoluble in strong alkali (‘residual’ fraction). By two days after flower opening, the galactose content of both the residual fraction and a Na₂CO₃-soluble pectin-rich cell wall fraction had sharply decreased, and continued to decline as flowers began to wilt. In contrast, amounts of other neutral sugars showed little change over this time, and depolymerisation of pectins and hemicelluloses was barely detectable throughout petal development. Size exclusion chromatography of Na₂CO₃-soluble pectins showed that there was a loss of neutral sugar relative to uronic acid content, consistent with a substantial loss of galactose from rhamnogalacturonan-I-type pectin. β-Galactosidase activity (EC 3.2.1.23) increased at bud opening, and remained high through to petal senescence. Two cDNAs encoding β-galactosidase were isolated from a mixed stage petal library. Both deduced proteins are β-galactosidases of Glycosyl Hydrolase Family 35, possessing lectin-like sugar-binding domains at their carboxyl terminus. PhBGAL1 was expressed at relatively high levels only during flower opening, while PhBGAL2 mRNA accumulation occurred at lower levels in mature and senescent petals. The data suggest that metabolism of cell wall-associated polymeric galactose is the major feature of both the opening and senescence of ‘Mitchell’ petunia flower petals.