Similar Journals
|
Journal of the History of Biology
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.711  Citation Impact (citeScore): 1 Number of Followers: 5  Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)ISSN (Print) 1573-0387 - ISSN (Online) 0022-5010 Published by Springer-Verlag  [2467 journals]
|
- David P.D. Munns and Kärin Nickelsen. Far Beyond the Moon: A History of
Life-Support Systems in the Space Age, Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2021, ISBN 9780822946540, 216 pp.-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2023-03-21
-
- Joel Hagen. Life out of Balance: Homeostasis and Adaptation in a Darwinian
World, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021, ISBN 9780817320898,
360 pp-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2023-03-21
-
- Inaugural Editorial
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2023-03-21
-
- “My Reputation is at Stake.” Humboldt's Mountain Plant Geography in
the Making (1803–1825)-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Alexander von Humboldt’s depictions of mountain vegetation are among the most iconic nineteenth century illustrations in the biological sciences. Here we analyse the contemporary context and empirical data for all these depictions, namely the Tableau physique des Andes (1803, 1807), the Geographiae plantarum lineamenta (1815), the Tableau physique des Îles Canaries (1817), and the Esquisse de la Géographie des plantes dans les Andes de Quito (1824/1825). We show that the Tableau physique des Andes does not reflect Humboldt and Bonpland’s field data and presents a flawed depiction of plant occurrences and vertical succession of vegetation belts, arising from Humboldt’s misreading of La Condamine’s description (1751). Humboldt's 1815 depiction, by contrast, shows a distribution of high-vegetation belts that is consistent with La Condamine’s description, while the 1824 depiction drops innovations made in 1815 and returns to simply showing numerous species’ names, thus not applying Humboldt’s own earlier zonation framework. Our analysis of contemporary reactions to Humboldt’s TPA includes Francis Hall’s posthumously published 1834 illustration of Andean plant zonation near Quito and Humboldt’s reaction to Hall’s critique. Throughout his work on plant geography, Humboldt disregarded some of his own observations, or confused them. At stake was his reputation as an innovator in the field of plant geography and a discoverer of the sequence of high-elevation vegetation belts on the world’s mountains.
PubDate: 2023-03-21
-
- The Russian Backdrop to Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of
Species-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Theodosius Dobzhansky was one of the principal ‘founding fathers' of the modern ‘synthetic theory of evolution' and the ‘biological species' concept, first set forth in his classic book, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937). Much of the discussion of Dobzhansky’s work by historians has focused on English-accessible sources, and has emphasized the roles of the Morgan School, and figures such as Sewall Wright, and Leslie C. Dunn. This article uses Dobzhansky’s Russian articles that are unknown to English-speaking readers, and his late 1920s to early 1930s correspondence with colleagues and friends in the Soviet Union, to clarify some of the Russian influences on Dobzhansky’s evolving evolutionary views, particularly the development of his views on species and speciation. For Dobzhansky, as for Darwin, the problem of species and speciation was crucial for his theoretical explanation of evolution.
PubDate: 2023-03-15
-
- The Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and the Rewriting of Global
Environmental History-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Beginning in the nineteenth century, scientists speculated that the Pleistocene megafauna—species such as the giant ground sloth, wooly mammoth, and saber-tooth cat—perished because of rapid climate change accompanying the end of the most recent Ice Age. In the 1950s, a small network of ecologists challenged this view in collaboration with archeologists who used the new tool of radiocarbon dating. The Pleistocene overkill hypothesis imagined human hunting, not climate change, to be the primary cause of megafaunal extinction. This article situates the Pleistocene overkill hypothesis in a broader history of the emergence of historical ecology as a distinct sub-discipline of paleoecology. Tracing the work of the Yale Geochronometric Laboratory and an interdisciplinary research network that included Paul Sears, Richard Foster Flint, Edward Deevey, Kathryn Clisby, and Paul S. Martin, it reveals how both the methods and the meaning of studying fossil pollen shifted between the 1910s and 1960s. First used as a tool for fossil fuel extraction, fossil pollen became a means of envisioning climatic history, and ultimately, a means of reimagining global ecological history. First through pollen stratigraphy and then through radiocarbon dating, ecologists reconstructed past biotic communities and rethought the role of humans in these communities. By the 1980s, the discipline of historical ecology would reshape physical environments through the practice of ecological restoration.
PubDate: 2023-03-15
-
- Species Transformation and Social Reform: The Role of the Will in
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s Transformist Theory-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Jean-Baptiste Lamarck is well known as a pre-Darwinian proponent of evolution. But much of what has been written on Lamarck, on his ‘Lamarckian’ belief in the inheritance of acquired characters, and on his conception of the role of the will in biological development mischaracterizes his views. Indeed, surprisingly little in-depth analysis has been published regarding his views on human physiology and development. Further, although since Robert M. Young’s signal 1969 essay on Malthus and the evolutionists, Darwin scholars have sought to place Darwin’s work in its social and political context, this has yet to be done adequately for Lamarck. Here I address this gap. I argue that the will was of particular importance to Lamarck’s social commentary and his hopes for the transformation of the French people and nation. Further, I argue that if we are to really grasp Lamarck’s ideas and intentions we need to contextualize his works in relation to prevailing debates in France about the physiology of mind and morals and the future of the nation.
PubDate: 2023-03-08
-
- Beyond the Instinct Debate: Daniel Lehrman’s Contributions to
Animal Behavior Studies-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the contributions of Daniel S. Lehrman (1919–1972) to animal behavior studies. Though widely cited as a critic of the early ethological program presented by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, other significant aspects of Lehrman’s career and research have not received historical attention. In this paper, I offer a fuller account of Lehrman’s work by situating his debate with ethologists within the larger context of Lehrman’s early scholarly development under G. K. Noble and T. C. Schneirla, by examining his scientific research on the ring-dove as well as his epistemological views about the best way to understand animal behaviour, and by presenting his leadership in institution and network-building of interdisciplinary approaches to animal behavior. This essay highlights Lehrman’s impact on the evolution of ethology, endocrinology, and developmental biology.
PubDate: 2023-02-15
-
- Sperm-Force: Naturphilosophie and George Newport’s Quest to Discover the
Secret of Fertilization-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract This paper analyses the forgotten concept of “sperm-force” proposed by George Newport (1803–1854). Newport is known for his comprehensive microscopic examinations of sperm and egg interaction in amphibian fertilization between 1850 and 1854. My work with archival sources reveals that Newport believed fertilization was caused by sperm-force, which the Royal Society refused to publish. My reconstruction chronologically traces the philosophical and experimental origins of sperm-force to Newport’s 1830s entomological work. Sperm-force is a remnant of Newport’s speculations on the creation of the active individual. I argue that sperm-force was rooted in British interpretations of German Naturphilosophie, which demonstrates Continental influences on mid-Victorian embryology, particularly the role of male generative power. This context provides further evidence that British versions of Romantic science fostered sophisticated experimental work. The refusal by Paleyite stalwarts of natural theology to publish Newport’s ideas illustrates the institutional resistance to German pantheistic and vitalistic influences. This reconstruction of sperm-force’s philosophical foundation and its reception offers new understandings of mid-Victorian attitudes toward the inheritance of mind and body. It situates Newport’s work within the nineteenth century’s scientific project to assign stereotypical genders to the gametes.
PubDate: 2023-02-13
-
- 2023 Everett Mendelsohn Prize
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2023-01-04
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09701-9
-
- Reading and Writing the History of Biology at JHB
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2022-12-20
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09700-w
-
- Alexander Dalrymple, the Utility of Coral Reefs, and Charles Darwin’s
Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract This paper aims to establish the connection between the theoretical and practical aims of the Office of the Hydrographer of the British Admiralty and Charles Darwin’s (1809–1882) work on coral reefs from 1835 to 1842. I also emphasize the consistent zoological as well as geological reasoning contained in these texts. The Office’s influences have been previously overlooked, despite the Admiralty’s interest in using coral reefs as natural instruments. I elaborate on this by introducing the work of Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808), the first hydrographer of the Admiralty and a figure who has flown under the radar of the history of coral reef theories. I show that Dalrymple introduced a unified account of coral reefs in which multiple features of the coral reefs, such as their shape, slope of the sides, ridges, channels, and elevation relative to the water, were all explained by the action of the winds and waves—and proposed that one could use these features to predict seafaring conditions around the islands. Then, I show that Darwin’s “Coral Islands” (1835) and his Coral Reefs monograph (1842) spoke to these hydrographical issues and did so, at times, by way of zoological reasoning. It was, for instance, the coral behavior and the related notion of a zoological or botanical station that ultimately proved the biggest blow to the Admiralty’s aim to use the coral reefs as instruments because it eroded many uniform predictions regarding the past or future of a coral reef. Connecting these themes leads us to a surprising conclusion: that Darwin’s theory of coral reefs, long a model instance of Darwin making uniform predictable inferences, was, in actuality, also his first formal encounter with something at times the entire opposite.
PubDate: 2022-12-20
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09699-0
-
- A “Central Bureau of Feminine Algology:” Algae, Mutualism, and
Gendered Ecological Perspectives, 1880–1910-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract While women’s participation at research stations has been celebrated as a success story for women in science, their experiences were not quite equal to that of men scientists. This article shows how women interested in practicing marine science at research institutions experienced different living and research environments than their male peers; moreover, it illustrates how those gendered experiences reflected and informed the nature of their scientific practices and ideas. Set in Roscoff, France, this article excavates the work and social worlds of a Russian scientist, Natalie Karsakoff (1863–1941), and a British émigré in France, Anna Vickers (1853–1906), to show how a small group of single women who studied algae created a “central bureau of feminine algology.” The social aspects of this bureau, and the physical space and support funded by Vickers, allowed these women scientists to both participate in male-dominated practices of science and lend evidentiary support to an ecological category that emphasized benign coexistence rather than struggle. This study adds an empirical case of single women scientists managing successful careers in science and contributing to science through publication and research.
PubDate: 2022-12-09
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09698-1
-
- Collaboration, Gender, and Leadership at the Minnesota Seaside Station,
1901–1907-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Mentorship and collaboration necessarily shaped opportunities for women in science, especially in the late nineteenth century at rapidly expanding public co-educational universities. A few male faculty made space for women to establish their own research programs and professional identities. At the University of Minnesota, botanist Conway MacMillan, an ambitious young department chair, provided a qualified mentorship to Josephine Tilden. He encouraged her research on algae and relied on her to do departmental support tasks even as he persuaded the administration to move her from instructor to assistant professor in 1903. Resulting publications on Minnesota algae led her to look further west, first at Yellowstone National Park and then along the Pacific Northwest coast. After visiting a particularly productive littoral site on Vancouver Island, she suggested that they establish a Minnesota Seaside Station there. Over its seven years in operation under the Midwestern leaders, that location proved remarkably productive. At the remote site, the two operated within their typical but not inevitable gendered roles and deliberately defined their seaside station as unconventional. They expected participants to study productively and, at the same time, find imaginative ways to enjoy nature at a place far from urban amenities. Gendered expectations remained casual as participants moved both within and against them. This study investigates how, in the early twentieth century, the role and expectations of mentorship shifted as Tilden established her own independent research agenda. The Minnesota Seaside Station, in particular, proved significant in developing the leadership skills essential for her to pursue research in the Pacific region at a time when American expansionism and indigenous cooperation made sites accessible to academic researchers.
PubDate: 2022-12-01
-
- The Making of the Sambucana: On Memory, the Body, and the Production of
Bioheritage-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract This paper develops the concept of bioheritage. It does so by considering the work of a local and distinct breed of sheep, the Sambucana, detailing how this sheep has enabled the integration of otherwise centrifugal relations between markets for the meat, cheese, and wool derived from the many other sheep that have traversed the same locality over the past three centuries. Such integration binds bodies, memory, and consumption in a manner that illustrates the distinctiveness of bioheritage and advances understanding of wider social and cultural processes.
PubDate: 2022-11-24
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09697-2
-
- Liguus Landscapes: Amateur Liggers, Professional Malacology, and the
Social Lives of Snail Sciences-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract Malacologists took notice of tree snails in the genus Liguus during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Since then, Liguus have undergone repeated shifts in identity as members of species, states, shell collections, backyard gardens, and engineered wildernesses. To understand what Liguus are, this paper examines snail enthusiasts, collectors, researchers, and conservationists—collectively self-identified as Liggers—in their varied landscapes. I argue that Liguus, both in the scientific imaginary and in the material landscape, mediated knowledge-making processes that circulated among amateur and professional malacologists across the United States and Cuba during the twentieth century. Beginning with an examination of early Liggers’ work in Florida and Cuba, this paper demonstrates how notions of taxonomy and biogeography informed later efforts to understand Liguus hybridization and conservation. A heterogeneous community of Liggers has had varied and at times contradictory commitments informed by shifting physical, social, and scientific landscapes. Genealogizing those commitments illuminates the factors underpinning a decision to undertake the until now little-chronicled large-scale and sustained transplantation of every living Floridian form of Liguus fasciatus into Everglades National Park. The social history of Liggers and Liguus fundamentally blurs distinctions between professional scientists and amateur naturalists. The experiences of a diverse cast of Liggers and their Liguus snails historicize the complex character of human-animal relations and speak to the increasing endangerment of many similarly range-restricted invertebrates.
PubDate: 2022-11-10
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09695-4
-
- The Return of the Geneticist: Theodosius Dobzhansky, Edward Chapin, and
Museum Taxonomy-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract In Fall 1939, as war engulfed Europe, the author of one of the most influential texts on genetics and evolution, Theodosius Dobzhansky, wrote a letter to curator of insects at the United States National Museum, Edward Albert Chapin. Dobzhansky wished to know what Chapin thought about his pursuing some taxonomic work on an old fascination of his: lady-bird beetles. This paper examines the resulting correspondence as a window into Dobzhansky’s attitude toward taxonomy, the different pressures on geneticists and taxonomists when wrestling with how to name species, the relation between biological theory and taxonomic practice, and how claims regarding human races may have motivated Dobzhansky’s continued interest in the work of beetle taxonomists. In doing so, this article builds on the work of Paul Farber and others to highlight the importance of including museums, taxonomy, and the naturalist tradition within the history of twentieth-century biology.
PubDate: 2022-11-03
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09694-5
-
- Discovering DNA Methylation, the History and Future of the Writing on DNA
-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract DNA methylation is a quintessential epigenetic mechanism. Widely considered a stable regulator of gene silencing, it represents a form of “molecular braille,” chemically printed on DNA to regulate its structure and the expression of genetic information. However, there was a time when methyl groups simply existed in cells, mysteriously speckled across the cytosine building blocks of DNA. Why was the code of life chemically modified, apparently by “no accident of enzyme action” (Wyatt 1951)' If all cells in a body share the same genome sequence, how do they adopt unique functions and maintain stable developmental states' Do cells remember' In this historical perspective, I review epigenetic history and principles and the tools, key scientists, and concepts that brought us the synthesis and discovery of prokaryotic and eukaryotic methylated DNA. Drawing heavily on Gerard Wyatt’s observation of asymmetric levels of methylated DNA across species, as well as to a pair of visionary 1975 DNA methylation papers, 5-methylcytosine is connected to DNA methylating enzymes in bacteria, the maintenance of stable cellular states over development, and to the regulation of gene expression through protein-DNA binding. These works have not only shaped our views on heritability and gene regulation but also remind us that core epigenetic concepts emerged from the intrinsic requirement for epigenetic mechanisms to exist. Driven by observations across prokaryotic and eukaryotic worlds, epigenetic systems function to access and interpret genetic information across all forms of life. Collectively, these works offer many guiding principles for our epigenetic understanding for today, and for the next generation of epigenetic inquiry in a postgenomics world.
PubDate: 2022-10-14
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09691-8
-
- Soraya de Chadarevian, Heredity Under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the
Study of the Human Genome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020),
272 pp, 36 halftones, $112.50 Cloth, ISBN 9780226685083-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
PubDate: 2022-09-13
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09690-9
-
- Mimush Sheep and the Spectre of Inbreeding: Historical Background for
Festetics’s Organic and Genetic Laws Four Decades Before Mendel’s
Experiments in Peas-
Free pre-print version: Loading...Rate this result: What is this?Please help us test our new pre-print finding feature by giving the pre-print link a rating.
A 5 star rating indicates the linked pre-print has the exact same content as the published article.
Abstract: Abstract The upheavals of late eighteenth century Europe encouraged people to demand greater liberties, including the freedom to explore the natural world, individually or as part of investigative associations. The Moravian Agricultural and Natural Science Society, organized by Christian Carl André, was one such group of keen practitioners of theoretical and applied scientific disciplines. Headquartered in the “Moravian Manchester” Brünn (nowadays Brno), the centre of the textile industry, society members debated the improvement of sheep wool to fulfil the needs of the Habsburg armies fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Wool, as the raw material of soldiers' clothing, could influence the war’s outcome. During the early nineteenth century, wool united politics, economics, and science in Brno, where breeders and natural scientists investigated the possibilities of increasing wool production. They regularly discussed how “climate” or “seed” characteristics influenced wool quality and quantity. Breeders and academics put their knowledge into immediate practice to create sheep with better wool traits through consanguineous matching of animals and artificial selection. This apparent disregard for the incest taboo, however, was viewed as violating natural laws and cultural norms. The debate intensified between 1817 and 1820, when a Hungarian veteran soldier, sheep breeder, and self-taught natural scientist, Imre (Emmerich) Festetics, displayed his inbred Mimush sheep, which yielded wool extremely well suited for the fabrication of light but strong garments. Members of the Society questioned whether such “bastard sheep” would be prone to climatic degeneration, should be regarded as freaks of nature, or could be explained by natural laws. The exploration of inbreeding in sheep began to be distilled into hereditary principles that culminated in 1819 with Festetics’s “laws of organic functions” and “genetic laws of nature,” four decades before Gregor Johann Mendel’s seminal work on heredity in peas.
PubDate: 2022-06-07
DOI: 10.1007/s10739-022-09678-5
-
