Civic Biology and the Origin of the School Antievolution Movement

In discussing the origins of the antievolution movement in American high schools within the framework of science and religion, much is overlooked about the influence of educational trends in shaping this phenomenon. This was especially true in the years before the 1925 Scopes trial, the beginnings of the school antievolution movement. There was no sudden realization in the 1920’s – sixty years after the Origin of Species was published – that Darwinism conflicted with the Bible, but until evolution was being taught in the high schools, there was no impetus to outlaw it. The creation of “civic biology” curricula in the late 1910’s and early 20’s, spearheaded by a close-knit community of textbook authors, brought evolution into the high school classroom as part of a complete reshaping of “biology” as a school subject. It also incorporated progressive ideologies about the purposes of compulsory public education in shaping society, and civic biology was fundamentally focused on the applications of the life sciences to human life. Antievolution legislation was part of a broader response to the ideologies of the new biology field, and was a reaction not only to the content of the new subject, but to the increasingly centralized control and regulation of education. Viewing the early school antievolution movement through the science-religion conflict is an artifact of the Scopes trial’s re-creation of its origins. What largely caused support for␣the school antievolution movement in the South and particularly Tennessee were concerns over public education, which biology came to epitomize.     

Method as a Function of “Disciplinary Landscape”: C.D. Darlington and Cytology, Genetics and Evolution, 1932–1950

This article considers the reception of British cytogeneticist C.D. Darlington’s controversial 1932 book, Recent Advances in Cytology. Darlington’s cytogenetic work, and the manner in which he made it relevant to evolutionary biology, marked an abrupt shift in the status and role of cytology in the life sciences. By focusing on Darlington’s scientific method – a stark departure from anti-theoretical, empirical reasoning to a theoretical and speculative approach based on deduction from genetic first principles – the article characterises the relationships defining the “disciplinary landscape” of the life sciences of the time, namely those between cytology, genetics, and evolutionary theory.     

Muriel Wheldale Onslow and Early Biochemical Genetics

Muriel Wheldale, a distinguished graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, was a member of William Bateson’s school of genetics at Cambridge University from 1903. Her investigation of flower color inheritance in snapdragons (Antirrhinum), a topic of particular interest to botanists, contributed to establishing Mendelism as a powerful new tool in studying heredity. Her understanding of the genetics of pigment formation led her to do cutting-edge work in biochemistry, culminating in the publication of her landmark work, The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants (1916). In 1915, she joined Frederick Gowland Hopkin’s Department of Biochemistry as assistant and in 1926 became one of the first women to be appointed university lecturer. In 1919 she married the biochemist Huia Onslow, with whom she collaborated until his death in 1922. This paper examines Wheldale’s work in genetics and especially focuses on the early linkage of Mendelian methodology with new techniques in biochemistry that eventually led to the founding of biochemical genetics. It highlights significant issues in the early history of women in genetics, including the critical role of mentors, funding opportunities, and career strategies.     

A Life More Ordinary: The Dull Life but Interesting Times of Joseph Dalton Hooker

The life of Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) provides an invaluable lens through which to view mid-Victorian science. A biographical approach makes it clear that some well-established narratives about this period need revising. For example, Hooker’s career cannot be considered an example of the professionalisation of the sciences, given the doubtful respectability of being paid to do science and his reliance on unpaid collectors with pretensions to equal scientific and/or social status. Nor was Hooker’s response to Darwin’s theories either straightforward or contradictory; it only makes sense as carefully crafted equivocation when seen in the context of his life and career. However, the importance of Hooker’s life is ultimately its typicality; what was true of Hooker was true of many other Victorian men of science.     

Ezenwa-Ohaeto: Chants and the Minstrel

Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s life encapsulates what the critic and novelist Isidore Okpewho has described as the “dignity of intellectual labour.” This becomes clear as we take into consideration, the range of his production as a poet, scholar, and occasional journalist. Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s work grapples with a vast range of areas of specifically Nigerian literature and culture in the 20th century, but in general with the literature of the postcolonial world as they have come to express distinct, recognizable moral and aesthetic values. His untimely death in 2005 therefore, has implication for the study of this literature, particularly because it marks the closure of the questic imagination of a poet/scholar whose interventions were critical in the formation of the critical values of contemporary African writing. This paper examines Ezenwa-Ohaeto’s contributions in the light of this, and puts in some perspective, aspects of his life and work, and its implications in the formal canon that he helped to shape and stabilize.     

Post-Haeckelian comparative biology — Adolf Naef’s idealistic morphology

Summary The present study describes the conceptual framework of Adolf Naef’s idealistic morphology as presented at the onset of the 20^th century. According to Naef, Haeckel’s and Gegenbaur’s approaches towards a phylogenetic biology were insufficient. He made it clear that Haeckel’s ideas were based on typological morphology. Thus, Haeckel’s views on comparative biology pointed back to pre-Darwinian concepts. Naef’s consequence was not to work out his own evolutionary morphology but to systematize the earlier typological concept. Consequently, he separated comparative morphology from phylogenetic studies. This idea was adopted by Hennig and was even imported into modern cladism.     

Flora was His Interest and Prime Course of Study: A Botanical Career for W.E. Ricker Disappears

Synopsis Bill Ricker’s career went through many twists in his academic years. He had taken botany in his senior matriculation year at high school and he had collected over 100 species of flora before commencement of university life. At the conclusion of his first university year, he set out over the summer to collect a much larger sample of species, primarily from the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence ecoregion, to fulfil a requirement for a second year botany course (spermatophytes). He identified about 390 species, and some 254 were collected and pooled with those from previous years to make a final submission of 354 spermatophyte species. Field plant identification continued in each academic year thereafter, in concert with collections and identifications of aquatic invertebrates in his summer projects while under the employment of the Ontario Fisheries Research Laboratory. At the conclusion of his undergraduate years, Bill had taken more courses in botany than in zoology, and it was the summer employment that had really prepared him for postgraduate work in fisheries biology, which was ecologically oriented. When Bill left Ontario in the autumn of 1931 he had identified over 600 species of plants, excluding lower cryptogams, but including many aquatic species of higher plants. In western North America Bill’s botanical career began at Cultus Lake in 1931. He again studied all aspects of the basin while employed with the federal government, and from the work he assembled a Ph.D. thesis. At the time of thesis completion he had identified over 300 species of flora, including alpine plants at timberline, 1500 – 1800 m above lake level, and planktonic algae in its water column. In 1939, after more field fisheries work in the Fraser River basin of British Columbia, Bill accepted a position with the biological staff at Indiana University. In this period which concluded in 1950 he identified another 50 – 110 species of flora, all in the Carolinian ecoregion, and hitherto not seen by him. Considering all floral classes, Bill’s eastern North American repertoire had by then added up to 791 species, representative of more than 112 families of plants. Returning west for the remainder of his life, new identifications elsewhere added to his Cultus Lake list which slowly added up to about 1000 species for the west coastal region of North America. Flora was also identified elsewhere in the mid-continental region of North America, in Eurasia where the Abisko region of Lappland was a highlight, and in South America and New Zealand. Records of his botanical prowess, were kept primarily in his diaries, which began in 1923 and were maintained consistently to the end of 1934, and thereafter intermittently to 1949. The diaries reveal that his career as a budding botanist was subtly hijacked by a wily Professor W.H.K. Harkness in the rival Biology Department who out-manoeuvred Drs. R.B. Thompson and R.A. Sifton in the Botany Department. The former always managed to employ Bill in summer and keep him occupied in the department’s labs during the autumn and winter and spring, tying up any free time when the botanist had approached him on lab work. Certainly, the botany courses taken and which he excelled at were more appropriate for his aquatic ecological pursuits. Salesmanship won the day for the zoologists, but Bill was a life-long botanist regardless of whatever else he studied or managed throughout his professional career. The last days of his life had a botanical conclusion.     

Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education: Why Bother Teaching Evolution in High School?

Evolution is a foundational organizing principle of the life sciences, and yet people still argue that it should be taught only in college, urging that it’s not necessary, too controversial, or too difficult to teach evolution in high school. Faced with such arguments, teachers and administrators need to have responses. Moreover, they need to teach evolution so that the coverage of evolution in the K-12 curriculum reflects its central place in biology.     

Cell surface and other morphological changes accompanying growth inhibition in simian virus 40-transformed 3T3 mouse fibroblasts cells induced by glucocorticoids§

A number of morphological changes accompany the G₂ blockage caused by glucocorticosteroids in simian virus 40-transformed 3T3 mouse fibroblasts cells. Under phase contrast microscopy dexamethasone-treated cells have darkened and raised nuclear regions with ‘lines’ running over their cytoplasmic areas. They are more resistant to trypsinization and smaller in volume. Since inhibitors of DNA and protein synthesis prevent this ‘glucocorticoid morphology’, the ‘darkening’ may be due to the accumulation of macromolecules within G₂-blocked cells and the induction of a protein(s) may be needed for the morphological changes. Colchicine and cytochalasin B do not bring about the glucocorticoid morphology, suggesting that it is not due to a general de-polymerization of microtubules or microfilaments. With scanning electron microscopy treated cells show a great reduction in the amount and a re-organization of microvilli and microplicae. Granules of lead precipitate at the periphery are also clearly evident in transmission electron micrographs. These observations reveal profound morphological alterations, including cell surface changes, induced by glucocorticosteroids. This work was carried out at the Department of Chemistry, Boston University, 685, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.     

The Spatial Turn: Geographical Approaches in the History of Science

Over the past decade or so a number of historians of science and historical geographers, alert to the situated nature of scientific knowledge production and reception and to the migratory patterns of science on the move, have called for more explicit treatment of the geographies of past scientific knowledge. Closely linked to work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies and connected with a heightened interest in spatiality evident across the humanities and social sciences this ‹spatial turn’ has informed a wide-ranging body of work on the history of science. This discussion essay revisits some of the theoretical props supporting this turn to space and provides a number of worked examples from the history of the life sciences that demonstrate the different ways in which the spaces of science have been comprehended.     

A general definition of interpretation and its application to origin of life research

We draw on Short’s work on Peirce’s theory of signs to propose a new general definition of interpretation. Short argues that Peirce’s semiotics rests on his naturalised teleology. Our proposal extends Short’s work by modifying his definition of interpretation so as to make it more generally applicable to putatively interpretative processes in biological systems. We use our definition as the basis of an account of different kinds of misinterpretation and we discuss some questions raised by the definition by reference to parallel problems in the field of teleosemantics. We propose that interpretative responses fulfilling the criteria of our definition may be made by relatively simple molecular entities and we suggest two specific empirical applications of the definition to experimental work in the field of origin of life research. Our wider aim is to suggest that a well formulated naturalistic definition of interpretation will allow a re-evaluation of the role of semiotic phenomena in biological systems, including the generation of empirically testable hypotheses.     

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.     

Relationships between macrophytic vegetation and physical features of river habitats: the need for a morphological approach

The aim of this paper is to study the relationships between the physical features of rivers and the distribution of macrophyte vegetation. Field work was undertaken at 207 stations along the Scorff River and its tributaries, a salmon river system in southern Brittany (western France). The physical features were considered using a principal component analysis (PCA). Stepwise multiple regression models made it possible to assess their relationships with the botanical data. The first five axes of the physical PCA (used as explicative variables) were initially linked to the most frequently surveyed species, then to their eco-morphological types, and, finally to Arber’s (1920. Water Plants. A Study of Aquatic Angiosperms. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 414 pp) morphological classification. It was concluded that plant morphology was closely related to these environmental factors. This could contribute to the development of predictive models for plant distribution and could increase the knowledge of reference vegetation related to bioindication systems.     

Cast in Plastic: Semiotic Plasticity and the Pragmatic Reading of Darwin

As Darwin portended but failed to develop, and of which Gould made much, the forensic evidence of evolution points toward Punctuated Equilibrium rather than Phyletic Gradualism; however Gould’s empirical postulation has long suffered from its lack of a testable theoretical basis. This is rectified by the work of Jaroslav Flegr and the Frozen Plasticity Theory, a hypothesis with striking application within semiotic theory and hence to questions of epistemology and ontology. The consequences of applying FPT within Biosemiotics is this: when any particular sign carries a great range of interpretation (semiotic polymorphism) combined with a high degree of mutually supportive referencing (semiotic pleiotropy), that sign is less likely to exhibit plasticity—less able to find new expressions capable of taking on a life of their own (as it were), but more likely to exhibit elasticity, and the flexibility necessary to survive a wide variety of niches. By contrast, much Darwinian and most Neo-Darwinian thought presumes that plasticity is equally and necessarily present in all living things, and that all populations thus slowly evolve. This devalues the point of interplay of such processes, which is the instigation of a specific instance of relating both delineated by and delineating its own unique heritage, and a phenomenon of signage. The presumption that these moments of transaction are all of a singular type has generated certain failures in extrapolating from evolutionary theory to understanding the experience of life. However Darwin was read differently by Darwin’s philosophical champion and Peirce’s “boxing master” Chauncey Wright. Using the historical encounter of the early Pragmatists with Origin, the hypothesis that Peirce’s Pragmatism and Semiotics originated within a study of the ontology implicit within Darwin’s one long argument, and also an evocative import from Sir Edward Strachey, this essay approaches Frozen Plasticity as a theoretical semiosis, so as to clarify the functioning of signage in evolution and cognition.     

The ecolabel and sustainable development

Abstract  The goal of the different national and supranational ecolabelling programs is to encourage consumers to choose products which are the least damaging to the environment. It is clear that the involvement of product and service users is essential to the establishment of sustainable consumption patterns. For this reason, ecolabelling must necessarily limit any risks of uncertainty. To this end, labels must take into account all the impacts of a product’s life cycle and use a reliable and verifiable evaluation method. In general, the organizations in charge of ecolabelling programs claim that a multi-criteria approach is used to define the exact labelling criteria appropriate for the product categories in question. These organizations generally maintain that their approach is based on the completion of exhaustive and complete life cycle analyses, which take into account all of the impacts caused by a product throughout its life cycle. And yet, the real situation is often far less clear-cut, and these simplified approaches, which tend to reconcile economic realism and methodological coherence, constitute the usual procedure for criteria definition. Thus, the procedures involved in criteria development often rely on a ‘semi-qualitative’ approach to the life cycle which uses both qualitative and quantitative data in order to identify the product’s significant stages on the environment. Presently, the ecolabel is a ‘non-verifiable expert property’ for the consumer. The ecolabel’s lack of objectivity in its criteria and its lack of transparency, resulting from non standardized methods whose accuracy cannot be measured, can only damage this sustainable development tool’s credibility. In effect, the primary hindrance to ecolabel development lies precisely within this difficulty of finding a compromise between economic feasibility and the scientific and methodological rigor which are indispensable to the label’s credibility and veracity.     

Lacepède’s Syncretic Contribution to the Debates on Natural History in France Around 1800

Lacepède was a key figure in the French intellectual world from the Old Regime to the Restoration, sinc e he was not only a scientist, but also a musician, a writer, and a politician. His brilliant career is a good example of the progress of the social status of scientists in France around 1800. In the life sciences, he was considered the heir to Buffon and continued the latter’s Histoire naturelle, but he also borrowed ideas from anti-Buffonian (e.g. Linnaean) scientists. He broached many important subjects such as the nature of man, the classification of animals, the concept of species, and the history of the Earth. All these topics led to tensions in the French sciences, but Lacepède dealt with them in a consensual, indeed even ambiguous way. For example, he held transformist views, but his concept of evolution was far less precise and daring than Lamarck’s contemporaneous attempts. His somewhat confused eclecticism allowed him to be accepted by opposing camps of the French scientific community at that time and makes his case interesting for historians, since the opinions of such an opportunistic figure can illuminate the figure of the French intellectual better than more original works could do. In turn, Lacepède’s important social and scientific position gave his views a significant visibility. In this sense, his contributions probably exerted an influence, in particular with regard to the emergence of transformist theories.     

Recent changes in allometric relationships among morphological traits in the dipper (Cinclus cinclus)

Organisms are responding to recent climate warming by changing different aspects of their biology, including morphology. The present work examines the way in which dipper (Cinclus cinclus) morphology has varied over the past 20 years (1985–2005) in Sierra Nevada (south-eastern Spain). Tarsus length has decreased, but wing and tail length have increased in the same period. These opposite trends have provoked changes in the allometric relationships among the different parts of the body in the dipper. A decrease in body size is predicted by Bergmann’s rule, and similar results have been found in other birds. However, although this study found a decrease in tarsus length, no change was found for body mass. The increase in wing and tail length may be related to a variation in the trophic niche in response to the decrease in water volume of rivers that occurred during the study period. Other studies show that the dipper’s diet varies with water flow, and water flow has decreased in the study area as a consequence of climatic warming.     

Inbreeding,eugenics, and Helen Dean King (1869–1955)

Helen Dean King’s scientific work focused on inbreeding using experimental data collected from standardized laboratory rats to elucidate problems in human heredity. The meticulous care with which she carried on her inbreeding experiments assured that her results were dependable and her theoretical explanations credible. By using her nearly homozygous rats as desired commodities, she also was granted access to venues and people otherwise unavailable to her as a woman. King’s scientific career was made possible through her life experiences. She earned a doctorate from Bryn Mawr College under Thomas Hunt Morgan and spent a productive career at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia where she had access to the experimental subjects which made her career possible. In this paper I examine King’s work on inbreeding, her participation in the debates over eugenics, her position at the Wistar Institute, her status as a woman working with mostly male scientists, and her involvement with popular science.     

A theory of speech perception: II

The author’s theory of speech perception, as applied to time-dependent speech sounds, leads to many testable predictions. While some of these predictions are consistent with conventional knowledge, others are new and quite unexpected. A few are in contradiction to long accepted experimental results. A computer-aided experimental program, designed to test the theory, wholly supported these predictions. In view of this outcome, it seems desirable to test other predictions of the theory and to reexamine some conventionally accepted views in order to arrive at a more comprehensive theory of speech. The present findings indicate that, apart from categorization, consonants are similar to vowels: they exhibit parallel organizations and transformation properties. Supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Electronics Research Center, Cambridge, under Contract NAS-12-129. The first part of the work appeared inBull. Math. Biophysics, Vol.,29, 793–825, 1967.