“What is Dead May Not Die”: Locating Marginalized Concepts Among Ordinary Biologists

Peterson, Erik L.; Hall, Crystal

doi:10.1007/s10739-020-09618-1

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…And, perhaps to defang that attack, Crick lumped under the heading of 'vitalist': (1) those who were skeptical regarding his claims about the eminent ability to reduce the life sciences to the physical sciences and (2) those who were skeptical regarding the desirability of doing so. There were, by my count, at least two dozen prominent life scientists who, following Commoner, openly opposed these two points (Peterson 2016;Peterson & Hall 2020). Counting the numerous physical scientists and philosophers who also opposed these two points, that indeed could constitute a wave.…”

Section: Not Vitalism; Bioexceptionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Who were the 1950s and 1960s vitalists against whom Crick made these pronouncements? How could vitalists exist in the professional life sciences at all, given that the term "vitalism" was more or less professionally hazardous by the 1960s (Peterson & Hall 2020)? Why did Crick, by then an internationally known pioneer of molecular biology, deliver his speeches in an American high school?…”

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confidence: 99%

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A ‘Fourth Wave’ of Vitalism in the Mid-20th Century?

Peterson

2023

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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In his 1966 John Danz lectures, Francis H. C. Crick decried vitalism in the life sciences. Why did he do this three decades after most historians and philosophers of science regarded vitalism as dead? This essay argues that, by advocating the reduction of biology to physics and chemistry Crick was: (a) attempting to imbue the life sciences with greater prestige, (b) paving the way for bioengineering and the reduction of consciousness to molecules, and (c) trying to root out religious sentiment in the life sciences. In service of these goals, Crick deployed vitalism as a straw man enemy. His wave of so-called vitalists in the middle of the twentieth century in fact raised legitimate questions regarding the relationship of organisms to their DNA molecules that Crick was ill-equipped to answer. Moreover, most were not vitalists at all but advocates for what I term bioexceptionalism—an argument for the methodological utility of keeping biological pursuits within their own domains, distinct from physics and chemistry, regardless of the ontological status of living things. Nevertheless, Crick’s status as a “cross-worlds influencer” entrenched a philosophically-enervated reductionism in the life sciences for decades.

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Section: Not Vitalism; Bioexceptionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

A ‘Fourth Wave’ of Vitalism in the Mid-20th Century?

Peterson

2023

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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The Organism in Evolutionary Explanation: From Early Twentieth Century to the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Baedke

Fábregas‐Tejeda

2023

Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development

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In recent years there have been a number of calls for integrating developmental and organismal phenomena into evolutionary theory. This so-called Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) argues that evolutionary theory should not primarily explain certain evolutionary phenomena by highlighting genes and populations but organisms instead, in particular how their development and behavior biases and drives evolutionary change. Here, we offer a new historiography that focuses less on the differences between the EES and the Modern Synthesis but seeks to provide a better understanding about which theoretical and explanatory traditions the organism-centered framework of the EES draws on. This concerns especially three currently resurfacing explanatory roles granted to organisms in evolution: organisms should allow (1) contextualizing parts in development, especially genes, (2) focusing on reciprocal organism-environment relations (in contrast to, e.g., gene-environment interactions), and (3) understand the role of agency in evolution. Through this analysis, we show that the EES advances a revival of older explanatory roles granted to the organism in evolutionary research, which became marginalized in the second half of the twentieth century. This new perspective helps to re-center contemporary theoretical debates towards relevant questions of explanatory standards in evolutionary biology.

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Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2022

Neu¹

2022

Isis

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“What is Dead May Not Die”: Locating Marginalized Concepts Among Ordinary Biologists

Cited by 3 publications

References 35 publications

A ‘Fourth Wave’ of Vitalism in the Mid-20th Century?

A ‘Fourth Wave’ of Vitalism in the Mid-20th Century?

The Organism in Evolutionary Explanation: From Early Twentieth Century to the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2022

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