Review Of "Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist In An Evolving World" By R. A. Raff (original) (raw)
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The Evolution of Views on Embryology
Metascience, 2007
Ron Amundson is both an historian and a philosopher of biology and has done research work that requires such a double ability. In this book, he forces us to look at biology as a whole -history, science, and epistemological models -and calls for a new equilibrium to be achieved by a revision of certain basic tenets that shaped neo-Darwinian biology in the 20th century. The subtitle of his book, Roots of Evo-Devo, and the title of the first section, ''Evo-devo as a new and old science'' shows that a synthetic model, encompassing evolutionary and developmental biology, is the key to such a new equilibrium and that the model is not a recent creation. Actually, it dates back before the neo-Darwinian synthesis. I think the historical framework Amundson has devised can have a part in this project and he has also designed an insightful philosophical plan of his own.
Embryology and Evolution 1920-1960: Worlds Apart
During the early part of the 20th century most embryologists were skeptical about the significance of Mendelian genetics to embryological development. A few embryologists began to study the developmental effects of Mendelian genes around 1940. Such work was a necessary step on the path to modern developmental biology. It occurred during the time when the Evolutionary Synthesis was integrating Mendelian and population genetics into a unified evolutionary theory. Why did the first embryological geneticists begin their study at that particular time? One possible explanation is that developmental genetics was a potential avenue of alliance between embryology and evolutionary biology, two fields that had been separated since the 1890s. To assess this possible motive it is necessary to explore the methodological contrasts that obtained between embryology and both Mendelian-chromosomal genetics and neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Some of these contrasts persist to the present day.
The essay reviews three books: August Weismann by Frederick Churchill, Stations in The Field by Raf de Bont, and Haeckel's Embryos by Nick Hopwood. By so doing, the essay analyzes the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on the uprising concepts of heredity, on the use of images to investigate and describe developmental processes, and on the institutions where that research happened. The essay argues for the relevance of institutional history and media studies in investigating the history of the biological concepts of heredity and development.
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2021
, have always centered on the history and sociology of science, predominantly on the social studies of biology. His new book Inside Science is in line with his previous writings, which have helped contextualize-and even demystifyscience as a social enterprise. Kohler pursued laboratory studies in his classic book on constructing the standard object of genetics out of a fruit fly, and he discussed American field biology and its 'practices of place' in a subsequent monograph. Now he has turned his attention further afield. To explain the intellectual innovations of
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2007
The German-American physiologist Jacques Loeb and the Polish embryologist Emil Godlewski, jr. (1875Godlewski, jr. ( -1944 contributed many valuable works to the body of developmental biology. Jacques Loeb was world famous at the beginning of the twentieth century for his development and demonstration of artificial parthenogenesis in 1899 and his experiments on regeneration. He served as a role model for the younger Polish experimenter Emil Godlewski, who began his career as a researcher like Loeb at the Zoological Station in Naples. Following Godlewski's first visit to Naples in 1901 a close relationship between the two scientists developed. Until Loeb's death in 1924 the two exchanged ideas via correspondence that was only interrupted during the First World War.