Traversing birth: continuity and contingency in research on development in nineteenth-century life and human sciences

Abstract

In the history of life sciences, it has often been argued that the individual organism emerged, around 1800, as a four-dimensional entity -a temporalized entity. Against this backdrop, the article asks how research on development contributed to structuring the time of the organism in terms of a historical process, that is, by understanding a given phenomenon as brought forth by what preceded it and as establishing conditions for what will follow, thus relating the past, the present and the future in a specific way. To shed light on this conceptualization, we must take into account not only embryological research on morphogenesis but also physiological research on the genesis of vital functions and the causation of congenital anomalies. Three layers of structuring time in such research may be discerned: the making of a trans-natal continuity of the developing organism; a conceptualization of birth as a threshold of past and future that paradigmatically reveals the historical understanding of such developmental continuity; and an approach to intergenerational transmission that confronts developmental continuity with historical contingency. My contribution focuses on the work of William T. Preyer and Charles Féré but, in a genealogical vein, situates their work in the larger context of nineteenth-century research on development.

Editorial introduction: Biomedicine and life sciences as a challenge to human temporality

“…In doing so, they touch upon assumptions about the original formation and essential characteristics of human existence and its evolvement over time. Thus, scientific research and biomedical practices are oriented at underlying models of stages and trajectories of embryonic and foetal development, their specific (dis-) continuities, attributes and potentials, as well as their respective moral significance (Rimon-Zarfaty et al, 2011;Bock von Wülfingen, 2015;Arni, 2015). Cryopreservation technologies (used for freezing gametes, tissues, and embryos) that offer new possibilities for halting and restarting biological processes add further temporal complexities by introducing new forms of "pre-existence", suspended or latent life (Lemke, 2019(Lemke, , 2021Hoeyer, 2017;Radin, 2013), thus manipulating developmental continuity over time.…”

Gregor Mendel and the History of Heredity

“…But that may itself just reflect a historical bias that was brought about by Mendel's discovery. 78 See Arni (2015) for an interesting exception. 79 Franklin (2013); Sabean et al (2013).…”

“It's Never Too Early”: Preconception Care and Postgenomic Models of Life

“…While views of maternal impression were still popular among doctors and the public until the nineteenth century, it is only at the end of the nineteenth century that ideas of "pre-natal culture" became institutionalized in medicine through fields like fetal physiology and antenatal pathology (Arni, 2015(Arni, , p. 2016. Caroline Arni's work on the German and French medical context, for instance, has highlighted the emergence of these disciplines around ideas of "trans-natal continuity" and intergenerational transmission that "confronts developmental continuity with historical contingency" Arni (2015). This emphasis on the potential hereditary morbidity of historical events is visible in the work of Charcot's disciple Charles Féré.…”