Conclusion
As frequently pointed out in this discussion, one of the most characteristic features of Mayr's approach to the history of biology stems from the fact that he is dealing to a considerable degree with his own professional history. Furthermore, his main criterion for the selection of historical episodes is their relevance for modern biological theory. As W. F. Bynum and others have noted, the general impression of his reviewers is that “one of the towering figures of evolutionary biology has now written a towering history of his discipline.”138 Bynum is here referring to The Growth of Biological Thought, but this observation holds equally true for Mayr's other historical writings: One must surely read this book [One Long Argument] not only for its content in itself, but for what it tells of its author. And certainly as one does so, one comes away full-handed. Many, if not all, of the disputes and controversies that have driven Mayr through his long intellectual life reappear, stated as forcefully and elegantly as ever.139
Up to this point, most reviewers agree; the bone of contention is, rather, how to evaluate Mayr's historical work, considering this observation. The two related characteristics of his work-I will call them subjectivity and presentism-stand in opposition to a widespread approach in the history of science exemplified by Kuhn's suggestion that “insofar as possible..., the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies.”140 There are, however, historians who consider the close connection between Mayr and the subject matter of his historical studies to be an advantage.141
On the other hand, it is assumed that the connection between past and present must result in a distortion of the historical truth and lead to a historiographical fallacy, commonly referred to as “Whig history”. Herbert Butterfield, who in 1931 gave the term its now generally accepted meaning, believed that “real historical understanding is not achieved by the subordination of the past to the present, but rather by our making the past our present and attempting to see life with the eyes of another century than our own”142. Unfortunately, Butterfield's definition of what he considers Whig history remains somewhat vague, and modern authors have emphasized what they consider most important. Butterfield's “subordination of the past to the present” is referred to in respect to the selection of subjects (there are more biographies of Charles Darwin than of, let's say, Louis Agassiz),143 to the evaluation of historical authors,144 or, more generally, to all kinds of histories “with one eye, so to speak, upon the present.”145 The underlying tendency of Whig historians is to produce a “historical account told from the viewpoint of those in power,”146 leading to a “glorification of the present.”147 It is obvious that Mayr's strongly presentist approach to the history of biology can be called Whiggish, if we apply the criteria of “selection” or “reference.” However, it might be worth mentioning that the program of writing a strictly historicist account of the history of science is challenged by various authors.148 For Mayr, it is not only legitimate but necessary to compare the present situation with the past. “Whiggish” is only the evaluation of an author in terms of our time.149
I cannot discuss the Whit/anti-Whig controversy in any detail here, apart from saying that Mayr has defended himself rather extensively against the charges of being Whiggish.150 Nevertheless, it may be useful to touch on some of the criticisms that are predominant in reviews of his writings. First, we encounter the notion that historians can write a true and convincing historical account only if they have no personal interest or interpretation of their own; Mayr, on the other hand, because he “has such strong interpretations of his own, ... cannot possibly convince everyone that he is right about everything.”151 It makes one wonder, what historian has ever been able to convince everyone that he or she is right about everything? But apart from this peculiar idea, it unquestionably poses certain dangers if the subject matter of historical scrutiny and the author are identical. At the same time, this identity brings certain advantages with it, especially firsthand experiences of the period in discussion. Whether these personal memories ultimately result in a distorted picture of the past has to be decided in every particular instance. The notion that a scientific study can be conducted by a completely detached observer from a neutral standpoint has been shown to be impossible in physics, and it is also an illusion in historiography. The question is not whether, but which kind of interest are the underlying motivation for a historian. At this point, Mayr is ahead of his critics when he suggests that our understanding of the past always has a subjective component: The main reason, however, why histories are in constant need of revision is that at any given time they merely reflect the present state of understanding; they depend on how the author interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and on his own conceptual framework and background. Thus, by necessity the writing of history is subjective and ephemeral.152
Second, the temporal proximity between the event and the historical analysis makes difficulties inevitable and will finally result in certain false assessments. But this applies to all historians when they discuss recent problems, regardless of whether they are personally involved or not: As long as the battle between Darwinism and Lamarckism was raging, it was quite impossible to undertake an unbiased evaluation of Lamarck. ...[The] definite refutation of Lamarck's theory of evolutionary causation clears the air. We can now study him without bias and emotion and give him the attention that this major figure in the history of biology clearly deserves.153
Third, Mayr is primarily interested in biological problems and not, for instance, historiographical, sociological, or psychological questions. Several authors have remarked that since the beginning of the professionalization of the history of science in the 1960s, a rift between two groups has developed, resulting from the heterogeneous professional backgrounds and interests of the people involved: the authors who were originally biologists and became interested in the history of their discipline only later on, and the authors who were trained as historians.154 Whereas the first group, the “biologists,” tend to be laymen in history proper, the “historians” are in most cases laymen in biology. Different professional backgrounds obviously shape the historical perspective in both groups, but neither approach is necessarily superior. The great number of important books in the history of biology written by “biologist” documents how valuable this point of view can be. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the writings of biologists in the history of science tend to have a strong “internalist” tendency and often neglect the professional, cultural, and political context of science. Mayr's approach is that of a “biologist”; it is “internalist,” and typical for scientists who turn to the history of their discipline.
I want to conclude my analysis with a quotation from a review by Douglas J. Futuyma, which gives a perceptive glimpse of Mayr's personality and style: One cannot help standing in awe of the germanic capacity for vast, allembracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner's integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr's The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bounds of essentialism.155 Within this style of thinking Mayr has “to offer...nothing less than a vision of biology that places neodarwinian evolutionary theory firmly at the centre.”156 There may be other visions of biology, but few of them have as indefatigable and able representatives as Darwinism has in Ernst Mayr.
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References
Ernst Mayr, “Where Are We?” Cold Spr. Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol., 24 (1959), 1.
See Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1980); Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology,” J. Hist. Biol., 25 (1992), 1–65; Joseph Allen Cain, “Common Problems and Cooperative Solutions: Organizational Activity in Evolutionary Studies, 1936–1947,” Isis, 84 (1993), 1–25. See also Mayr's own accounts: Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 525–554; idem, “What Was the Evolutionary Synthesis?” Trends Ecol. Evol., 8 (1992), 31–34.
A partial exception is Malcolm Jay Kottler's review of Growth of Biological Thought, where the attempt is made to link Mayr's history of biology to some of his other works. See Malcolm Jay Kottler, “A History of Biology: Diversity, Evolution, Inheritance,” Evolution, 37 (1983), 868–872. G. G. Simpson, in his review of the same book, claims that it can be understood as “an intellectual, psychological, and conceptual autobiography” of Mayr, rather than as a history of biology; however, he does not substantiate this point, but more or less elaborates how his own ideas differ from Mayr's (“Autobiology,” Quart. Rev. Biol., 57 [1982], 438). For recent discussions of Mayr's various careers see “Special Issue on Ernst Mayr at Ninety,” Biol. Phil., 9:3 (1994).
The content of Mayr's history of biology is discussed in various reviews of his books. For an overview and sympathetic remarks on Mayr's personality, see Michael Ruse, “Admayration,” Quart. Rev. Biol., 60 (1985), 183–192. For recent rather detailed analyses, see John C. Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin: Reflections on Ernst Mayr's Interpretation in The Growth of Biological Thought,” J. Hist. Biol., 25 (1992), 257–284; idem, “Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr's Writings,” J. Hist. Biol., 27 (1994), 311–347.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 7 (hereinafter cited as Mayr, GBT).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 7 (hereinafter cited as Mayr, GBT).
Douglas J. Futuyma, “A Synthetic History of Biology,” Science, 216 (1982), 843.
Mayr has used the notion of a first and a second Darwinian Revolution on two different levels: when discussing Darwin's discoveries of the theory of evolution versus the theory of natural selection (1837–38), and with respect to the reception of the Darwinian theories. See Ernst Mayr, “Darwin and Natural Selection: How Darwin May Have Discovered His Highly Unconventional Theory,” Amer. Sci., 65 (1977), 321–327; and idem, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). I am referring to the latter version.
For the early years of Mayr's career as a naturalist and systematist, see Walter Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist: His Contributions to Systematics and Evolution,” Biol. Phil., 9 (1994), 267–327; Jürgen Haffer, “Es wäre Zeit, einen ‘allgemeinen Hartert’ zu schreiben: Die historischen Wurzeln von Ernst Mayr's Beiträgen zur Evolutionssynthese,” Bonner zool. Beitr., 45 (1994), 113–123.
Ernst Mayr, “Die Ausbreitung des Girlitz (Serinus canaria serinus L.): Ein Beitrag zur Tiergeographie,” J. f. Ornithol., 74 (1926), 571–671. Mayr has commented: “My main work consisted in ferreting out literally hundreds and hundreds of local natural histories from France to Poland and analyzing the competence of the various observers who had either not recorded the serin finch or had made definite statements about it” (Ernst Mayr, Autobiographical Notes [private collection of Ernst Mayr], p. 52; hereinafter cited as Mayr, ABN). See also Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Ernst Mayr: Biologist-Historian,” Biol. Phil., 9 (1994), 359–371.
ErnstMayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp. 10–11. The term “new systematics” was coined by Julian Huxley in 1940: see Julian Huxley, ed., The New Systematics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).
“His [Mayr's] contributions in systematics and evolutionary biology are closely interwoven; they are difficult to unravel for separate analyses because they represent the empirical and theoretical aspects of the same research program” (Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist” [above, n.9], p. 269). See also Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (above, n. 11), p. 3.
“Already my first book Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) reveals my interest because I show again and again what the roots of some of the concepts and controversies were” (Mayr, ABN, p. 70).
Ernst Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology: Kinds of Causes, Predictability, and Teleology Are Viewed by a Practicing Biologist,” Science, 134 (1961), 1501–1506.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 1.
Mayr stresses the point that he has changed his opinion on various questions during his long career and considers this flexibility a sign of scientific creativity (pers. comm.).
See, for example, the festschrift on occasion of Mayr's seventy-fifth birthday, in Stud. Hist. Biol., 3 (1979). The contributors were Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Frank J. Sulloway, William Coleman, Mary Pickard Winsor, Stephen Jay Gould, Frederick B. Churchill, Garland E. Allen, William B. Provine, and Mark B. Adams. A more comprehensive view of Mayr's actual influence may be gained by an analysis of the dedications and acknowledgments in writings on the history of biology. Even a casual survey will certainly document his widespread presence in this kind of source. A very readable and informative review of the reviews of Mayr's Growth of Biological Thought is Ruse, “Admayration” (above, n. 4).
Ringer defines the “mandarins” as “a social and cultural elite which owes its status primarily to educational qualifications, rather than to hereditary rights or wealth” (Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969], p. 5). For a discussion of the mandarin spirit in biology, see Jonathan Harwood, Styles of Scientific Thought: The German Genetics Community 1900–1922 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 274–314. Mayr describes the attitude of his family as “very much that of upper-class Germans, that one should never stop trying to add to one's ‘Bildung’” (Mayr, ABN, p. 32). The comprehensive style of thought, characteristic of the German concept of Bildung, is certainly typical of Mayr.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 5, 831–832. Mayr was the second of three sons. The notion of birth order is currently analyzed by Frank Sulloway, “Orthodoxy and Innovation in Science: The Influence of Birth Order in a Multivariate Context,” Paper presented at the AAAS, New Orleans, February 16, 1990.
Science, especially the exact sciences, was also under attack after World War I. The life sciences, however, could more easily adapt to the anti-“mechanistic” milieu. See Paul Forman, “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment,” Hist. Stud. Phys. Sci., 3 (1971), 1–115.
For Mayr's critical attitude toward racist ideologies, see Ernst Mayr, “Discussion,” in Science and the Concept of Race, ed. Margaret Mead, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ethel Tobach, and Robert E. Light (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 103–105; idem, “Letter to the Editor,” Perspect. Biol. Med., 14 (1971), 505–506.
See, for example, Ernst Mayr. “Bernard Altum and the Territory Theory,” Proc. Linn. Soc. N.Y., no. 45/46 (1935), 24–38; “Illiger and the Biological Species Concept,” J. Hist. Biol., 1 (1968), 163–178; “Weismann and Evolution,” J. Hist. Biol., 18 (1985), 295–329; “Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter's Contributions to Biology,” Osiris, 2d ser., 2 (1986), 135–176. For Mayr's reviews in the history of biology, see below, Appendix.
Donald T. Campbell, “Blind Variation and Selective Retention in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes,” Psychl. Rev., 67 (1960), 391. See also Dean Keith Simonton, Scientific Genius: A Psychology of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Mayr served as editor of the Proceedings and Transactions of the Linnaean Society of New (1934–41) and of Evolution (1947–49). See Joseph Cain, “Ernst Mayr as Community Architect: Launching the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Journal Evolution,” Biol. Phil., 9 (1994), 387–427.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 18; Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1936). Mayr's personal copy was printed in 1957.
Ernst Mayr, “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution,” Harvard Lib. Bull., 13 (1959), 165–194.
See Mary Pickard Winsor, Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
Mayr, “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution” (above, n. 26), p. 168n.
Ernst Mayr, “Lamarck Revisited,” J. Hist. Biol., 5 (1972), 55–94. For a discussion of Mayr's work on Lamarck, see Burkhardt, “Ernst Mayr” (above, n. 10).
Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being (above, n. 25), p. 22.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 18.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 35.
“Thus we may say that the growth of knowledge proceeds from old problems to new problems, by means of conjecture and refutations” (Karl R. Popper, Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], p. 258; emphasis in original).
Ernst Mayr, “Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology,” in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal, ed. Betty J. Meggers (Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), p. 10. The Society for the Study of Evolution, in which Mayr was one of the key organizers, cosponsored, the Darwin Centennial Celebration in Chicago. Mayr's role in the organization of the Society of the Study of Evolution is discussed in Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution: Founding the Society for the Study of Evolution (1939–1950),” J. Hist. Biol., 27 (1994), 241–309. For an account of the celebration, see Issues in Evolution, ed. Sol Tax and Charles Callender, vol. III of Evolution after Darwin: The University of Chicago Centennial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 41–282. The Darwin Centennial not only had a scientific significance (historical and contemporary), it also reflected some of the zeitgeist of this time; see Tax's comment: “The Centennial was a success because it celebrated something with deep, meaning for the people of contemporary America” (ibid., p. 279). On the interplay between the history of science and modern biology in 1959 see, for example, Frederick B. Churchill, “Darwin and the Historian,” Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 17 (1982), 45–68. For an ethnographic account of the rituals involved in a scientific anniversary, see Pnina Abir-Am, “A Historiacal Ethnography of a Scientific Anniversary in Molecular Biology: The First Protein X-Ray Monography (1984, 1934),” Soc. Epistemol., 6 (1992), 323–354.
“It has been pointed out recently that most ‘histories’ of evolution are actually ‘prehistories.’ Their detailed treatment stops around 1860, precisely at the time when the development of the modern concepts began subsequently to the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859” Ernst Mayr, “Karl Jordan's Contribution to Current Concepts in Systematics and Evolution,” Trans. Roy. Entomol. Soc. London, 107 [1955], 45).
Ernst Mayr, review of Evolution: Die Geschichte ihrer Probleme und Erkenntnisse, by Walter Zimmermann, Sci. Mothly, 79 (1954), 57.
Mayr, “Where Are We?” (above, n. 1), p. 4. The appeal for cooperation between different branches of biology was expressed by evolutionary biologists from the 1930s on See Jonathan Harwood, “Metaphysical Foundations of the Evolutionary Synthesis: A Historiographical Note,” J. Hist. Biol., 27 (1994), 1–20; Cain, “Common Problems” (above, n. 2).
William B. Provine, Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 483.
See Ernst Mayr, “The New versus the Classical in Science,” Science, 141 (1963), 765. On the situation in systematics, see Keith Vernon, “Desperately Seeking Status: Evolutionary Systematics and the Taxonomists’ Search for Respectability 1940–60,” Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 26 (1993), 207–227; Cain, “Common Problems” (above, n. 2), pp. 16–22. On the rise of molecular biology, see Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 1.
Ernst Mayr, “Essay Review: The Recent Historiography of Genetics,” J. Hist. Biol., 6 (1973), 127.
Harwood, Styles of Scientific Thought (above, n. 18), pp. 306–307. Frank Sulloway has analyzed the effect of different contexts on the tendency of scientists to accept or reject new theories; see Sulloway, “Orthodoxy and Innovation in Science” (above, n. 19).
Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist” (above, n. 9), p. 268. A similar observation was made by David Hull: “These tenets [of Mayr's philosophy of biology] stem, ... from Mayr's experience as an evolutionary biologist; all of us are influenced in our outlook by the contingencies of our early training” (David L. Hull, “Ernst Mayr on the Philosophy of Biology: A Review Essay,” Hist. Methods, 23 [1990], 42.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 856.
“It is my conviction that one cannot understand the growth of biological thought unless one understands the thought-structure of biology’ Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 8).
Ernst Mayr, “Integration of Genotypes: Synthesis,” Cold Spr. Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol., 20 (1955), 331.
Ernst Mayr, The Grouth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 17.
Mayr, ABN (above, n. 10), p. 69–72. Mayr's approach is clearly different from what, for instance, Imre Lakatos suggested: “One way to indicate discrepancies between history and its rational reconstruction is to relate the internal history in the text, and indicate in the footnotes how actual history ‘misbehaved’ in the light of its rational reconstruction” (Imre Lakatos, “History of Science and its Rational Reconstructions [1971],” in The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, ed. J. Worrall and G. Currie, Philosophical Papers, vol. I [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978], p. 120).
“I have pointed out in this work many instances where physicalism has had a deleterious effect on developments in biology. ... In biology, where so many unique phenomena are encountered and where virtually all so-called laws have exceptions, the belief in the universality of laws has led to numerous invalid generalizations and to controversy” Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982) p. 846.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 847. For a discussion of this point from the positivist perspective, see Carl G. Hempel, “The Function of General Laws in History [1942],” in Theories of History, ed. Patrick Gardiner (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959), pp. 344–356.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 8. For Lovejoy's notion of “unit-ideas” see Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being (above, n. 25), pp. 3–23.
Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology” (above, n. 14), 1505.
See Ernst Mayr, “Epilogue,” Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 17 (1982), 117–118; for a later version see idem, “Darwin's Five Theories of Evolution,” in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 755–772.
See Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology” (above, n. 14), p. 1503. The importance of the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes for Mayr's philosophy of biology is stressed by John Beatty, “The Proximate/Ultimate Distinction in the Multiple Careers of Ernst Mayr,” Biol. Phil., 9 (1994), 333–356.
See Ernst Mayr, “Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis,” in Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 14 (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1974), pp. 91–117; Eve-Marie Engels, Die Teleologie des Lebendigen (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1982).
Rudolf Carnap, “Logical Foundations of the Unity of Science,” in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, ed. Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and Charles W. Morris, vol. 1, no. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938), p. 60. Physicalism is defined by Mayr as the attempt “to explain all biological processes in terms of movements and forces. Everything was mechanistic, everything was deterministic, and there was no unexplained residue” (Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology [above, n. 2], p. 9).
Mayr, ABN (above, n. 10), p. 69–72. Mayr refers to the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Berkeley, December 27, 1965. The speech was published as Ernst Mayr, “Discussion: Footnotes on the Philosophy of Biology,” Phil. Sci., 36 (1969), 197–202. Mayr commented further on this theme: “The philosophy of science has been dominated by physics to such an extent during past decades that any discussion of theory formation in biology must start out with the similarities between physics and biology” (Ernst Mayr, “Comments on ‘Theories and Hypotheses in Biology,’” in Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1966/1968, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofskyk, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 5 [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969], p. 450).
Ernst Mayr, “Introduction,” in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin, Facsimile of the first edition (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. 1964), p. vii.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 14.
See Ernst Mayr, “The Struggle against Physicists and Philosophers,” in One Long Argument (above, n. 8); Mayr, GBT, p. 830; Sandra Herbert, “Essay Review,” Isis, 84 (1993), 119.
See Heinrich Rickert, “Lebenswerte und Kulturwerte,” Logos: Internat. Z. Phil. Kult., 2 (1911/12), 131–166. For an analysis of the antimathematical and antiphysicalist currents during the Weimar years, see Forman, “Weimar Culture” (above, n. 20).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 856.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 856.
See Mayr, “What Was the Evolutionary Synthesis?” (above, n. 2), pp. 31–34.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 850. For recent discussions of rhetoric in science, see Charles Bazerman, Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Greg Myers, Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge (Madison: University Wisconsin Press, 1990); Charles Bazerman and James Paradis, eds., Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 850. Mayr is referring to Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937). See also Nigel Gilbert, “Referencing as Persuasion,” Soc. Stud. Sci., 7 (1977), 113–122.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 851.
See Neal Koblitz, “Mathematics as Propaganda,” in Mathematics Tomorrow, ed. Lynn Arthur Steen (New York, Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1981), pp. 111–120; Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, “Rhetoric and Mathematics,” in The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, ed. John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 53–68.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 851–852.
“Whenever there is a scientific controversy, the views of the losing side are almost invariably later misrepresented by the victors” (Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 12). See also Kuhn's similar statement: “When it repudiates a past paradigm, a scientific community simultaneously renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny, most of the books and articles in which that paradigm had been embodied ... the result is a sometimes drastic distortion in the scientist's perception of his discipline's past” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions [above, n. 32], p. 167).
Ernst Mayr, “Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution,” in Evolution as a Process, ed. Julian Huxley, A. C. Hardy, and E. B. Ford (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), pp. 157–180.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 837–838.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 15.
See Rachel Laudan, “Histories of the Sciences and Their Uses: A Review to 1913,” Hist. Sci., 31 (1993), 21. Mayr's organizational activities as a member of the “New York Circle” during the 1930s and 1940s are discussed in Cain, “Common Problems” (above, n. 2).
Jonathan Harwood has emphasized the “wide range of intellectual and ‘cultural’ interests” displayed by most of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis (“Metaphysical Foundations” [above, n. 37], p. 14).
For the broader worldview of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis, see John C. Greene, “The Interaction of Science and World View in Sir Julian Huxley's Evolutionary Biology,” J. Hist. Biol.23 (1990), 39–55; Sahotra Sarkar, “Science, Philosophy, and Politics in the Work of J. B. S. Haldane, 1922–1937,” Biol. Phil., 7 (1992), 385–409; M. J. S. Hodge, “Biology and Philosophy (Including Ideology): A Study of Fisher and Wright,” in The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics: A Centenary Reappraisal, ed. Sahotra Sarkar, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 142 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992), pp. 231–293; Mark B. Adams, ed., The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Smocovitis, “Unifying Biology” (above, n. 2); Harwood, “Metaphysical Foundations” (above, n. 37). A more comprehensive account of Mayr's philosophical concepts would have to not only consider his readings in philosophy, but also trace the numerous lectures and informal discussions at Harvard University.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 829–858. The term “science of science” was used widely before 1982; see Thomas S. Kuhn, “The History of Science [1968],” in idem, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), p. 122.
See Ronald N. Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 22.
Ernst Mayr, “Concerning a New Biography of Charles Darwin, and Its Scientific Shortcomings: Review of Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, by Gertrude Himmelfarb,” Sci. Amer., 201 (November 1959), 215. Mayr was one of the first to point out Darwin's originality in philosophy: “Darwin had violated all the rules of the game by placing his argument entirely outside the traditional framework of classical philosophical concepts and terminologies” Mayr, “Introduction” [above, n. 58], p. xi.
Mayr, “Integration of Genotypes” (above, n. 46), p. 327.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982, p. 6.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 1.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 839–840.
Mayr, “Cause and Effect in Biology” (above, n. 14), p. 1506. For an account of the efforts of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis to make biology “scientific” (in positivist terms) without, at the same time, losing its subject matter through reduction, see Smocovitis, “Unifying Biology” (above, n. 2). There seem to be few reasons, however, to agree with Smocovitis's assertion that only “within a positivist theory of knowledge ... [was] the unification of science desirable” (ibid., p. 4). Most of the architects, especially Mayr, vehemently opposed any attempt to unify science in a reductionist way, as suggested by logical empiricists. For a discussion of positivist and recent conceptions of reduction, see C. A. Hooker, “Towards a General Theory of Reduction,” Dialogue, 20 (1981), 38–59, 201–236, 496–529.
See Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934] (London and New York: Routledge, 1959); Imre Lakatos, “Introduction: Science and Pseudoscience,” in Worrall and Currie, Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes (above, n. 48), pp. 1–7.
Ernst Mayr, “Introduction” in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin, Facsimile of the first edition (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. 1964), p. xi. See also Ernst Mayr, “The Naturalist in Leidy's Time and Today,” Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 98 (1946), 271–272.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 4.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 848.
Ernst Mayr, “The Ideological Resistance to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection,” Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 135 (1991), 123.
Socioeconomic factors can, however, have an effect on the level of scientific activity. The distinction between ideological and socioeconomic factors is not present in 1982; but see Mayr, One Long Argument (above, n. 8), pp. 39–40.
“A further difficulty for the historian is posed by most scientists' unawareness of their own framework of ideas. They rarely articulate — if they think about it at all — what truths or concepts they accept without question and what others they totally reject. In many cases the historian can piece this together only by reconstructing the total intellectual milieu of the period. And yet an understanding of these silent assumptions may be necessary in order to answer previously puzzling questions” (Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambrideg, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 17–18).
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 7.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 4.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 4–5.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 3.
Mayr goes on: “Of course no one lives in a vacuum, and anyone who reads voraciously, as for example Darwin did ... is bound to be influenced by his reading. Darwin's notebooks are ample evidence for the correctness of this inference. But ... this by itself does not prove the thesis of the Marxists that ‘Darwin and Wallace were extending the laissez-faire capitalist ethos from society to all nature’” Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 5–6.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 14. “Nothing signaled the emancipation of science from religion and philosophy more definitely than the Darwinian revolution. Since that time it has become quite impossible to say by looking at an author's scientific publications whether he was a devout Christian or an atheist” (ibid., p. 13). For an alternative view see Kuhn: “The more carefully they [the historians] study ... the more certain they feel that those once current views of nature were, as a whole, neither less scientific nor more the product of human idiosyncrasy than those current today” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions [above, n. 32], p. 2). The possibility of telling the ideological background of an individual scientist from the content and logical form of his arguments was actually considered the touchstone for a sociological analysis; see Karl Mannheim, “Die Bedeutung der Konkurrenz im Gebiete des Geistigen,” in Verhandlungen des Sechsten Deutschen Soziologentages vom 17. bis 19. September 1928 in Zürich (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1929), pp. 35–83 (translated in From Karl Mannheim, 2d ed., ed. Kurt H. Wolff [New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Publishers, 1993], pp. 401–402).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 6.
Mayr, pers. comm.
See Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery (above, n. 85); Lakatos, “History of Science” (above, n. 48).
Ernst Mayr, “Comments,” in Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, 1962–1964, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. II (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), pp. 151–156.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 832.
“His [Lord Rothschild's] parents were first cousins and an above-average amount of homozygosity may be part of the explanation for the incongruous mixture of seemingly incompatible traits” (Ernst Mayr, review of Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies, and History, by Miriam Rothschild, Isis, 75 [1984], 602).
Mayr's generally rather positive stance toward psychology applies especially to cognitive psychology, whereas he is very doubtful about the concepts of psychoanalysis. For example: “Indeed, even Sigmund Freud based, in part, his theory of psychoanalysis on it [the biological concept of recapitulation]. Was it a sound foundation? In other words, is the theory valid? The answer is no” (Ernst Mayr, review of Ontogeny and Phylogeny, by Stephen Jay Gould, MCZ Newsl., 7 [1977], 3).
W. F. Bynum, “On the Written Authority of Ernst Mayr,” Nature, 317 (1985), 585.
See, for example, Mayr, “Ideological Resistance to Darwin's Theory” (above, n. 89), p. 126. For a different interpretation of Darwin's relation to natural theology, see Dov Ospovat, The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838–1859 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin” (above, n. 4).
Sigmund Freud, “The Question of a Weltanschauung [1993],” in Complete Psychological Works, Standard Edition, trans. James Strachey, vol. 22 (London: Hogarth, 1964), p. 160. See also Peter Gay, A Godless Jew: Freud, Atheism, and the Making of Psychoanalysis (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987).
See Mayr's autobiographical notes: “both of my parents were more less agnostic. ... I don't think I was more than 13 years old when I became very rebellious about all the miracles and other seemingly improbable events that were reported. I forever raised questions which embarrassed the teacher. Most of my class was behind me and I would try to get some reading that would strengthen my hand. Unfortunately I found in my father's library a copy of Haeckel's Welträtsel with numerous references to the apocryphal parts of the Bible. I read Haeckel for this and probably more or less ignored his evolutionary discussions. In later years I always said that I fully supported the ethics of Christianity but not its metaphysics. Still later I began to be disturbed at the strictly anthropocentric teachings of the Bible, including the New Testament, and the disregard for the environment” (ABN [above, n. 10], p. 45). Richard Goldschmidt, who was born twenty-six years earlier than Mayr, gave a vivid description of the antireligious zeal of his youth, which was also inspired by Haeckel's writings: see Richard Goldschmidt, Portraits from Memory: Recollections of a Zoologist (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956), pp. 34–36.
Ernst Mayr, “In Appreciation — David Lack,” Ibis, 115 (1973), 432.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 5.
See Steven Shapin, “Discipline and Bounding: The History and Sociology of Science as Seen through the Externalism-Internalism Debate,” Hist. Sci., 30 (1992), 333–369.
See Mannheim, “Bedeutung der Konkurrenz” (above, n. 97), English trans., p. 424.
This historic background explains why Mayr might not be inclined to follow John Greene's suggestion to recognize “that there is no such thing as a purely scientific approach to scientific problems of general scope” (Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin” [above, n. 4], p. 260). For an impression of the interplay of political and scientific issues during the 1940s and 1950s see, for example, Robert K. Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science” [originally: “Science and Technology in a Democratic Order,” 1942], in idem, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 267–278; Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945). Very important for biology was, of course, the case of Lysenkoism; see Julian Huxley, Heredity East and West: Lysenko and World Science (New York: Henry Schuman, 1949). See also David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, 2d ed. (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1991), pp. 76–79.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 7, 9. The liberal style of thinking of a scientist does not necessarily have to be connected with a liberal political conviction. The reason is that current conservative political thought in the United States has absorbed many originally liberal (Whig) tenets, such as individualism. In Mayr's case, however, both fields coincide and he considers himself a liberal (pers. comm.).
The independence of Mayr's concepts in the philosophy and history of biology has been criticized. However, if we consider the frequent methodological changes in the history of biology during the last decades, his rather idiosyncratic approach has its advantages. Recently, Mayr was made a fellow honoris causae by the Center for Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh) and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Konstanz for his contributions to philosophy.
During the 1920s, a whole array of holistic theories existed in the German-speaking countries that cannot be reduced to either Fascist or Marxist approaches. See Anne Harrington, “Interwar ‘German’ Psychobiology: Between Nationalism and the Irrational,” Sci. Context, 4 (1991), 429–447. Jonathan Harwood has recently argued that there may be similar metaphysical assumptions at the basis of both the interwar German holism and the evolutionary synthesis in the United States — namely, anti-reductionism; see Harwood, “Metaphysical Foundations” (above, n. 37). See also Forman, “Weimar Culture” (above, n. 20); Peter Galison, “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism,” Crit. Inq., 16 (1990), 709–752. In this context Mayr made an interesting observation: “At Harvard University it was in the year of unrest (1968) that student interest rather suddenly began to veer away from molecular biology, toward ecology, behavior, and evolution” (GBT, p. 892).
Theodosius Dobzhansky, “A Review of Some Fundamental Concepts and Problems of Population Genetics,” Cold Spr. Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol., 20 (1955), 1.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 172–173. For recent evolutionary accounts of the development of science, see Robert John Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 559–593; David Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 830–831.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 18.
Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origin of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), p. 153.
Ernst Mayr, “Attaching Names to Objects,” in What the Philosophy of Biology Is, ed. Michael Ruse (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), p. 238.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 840–843.
Mayr's selection model seems to be a combination of both; for example: “Active areas of biology experience a steady proposal of new conjectures (Darwinian variation) and some of them are more successful than others.” Mayr, “The Advance of Science and Scientific Revolutions,” J. Hist. Behav. Sci., 30 (1994), 333.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 840.
Mayr, “The Advance of Science and Scientific Revolutions” (above, n. 124). See also Ernst Mayr, “The Nature of the Darwinian Revolution: Acceptance of Evolution by Natural Selection Required the Rejection of Many Previously Held Concepts,” Science, 176 (1972), 981. On Kuhn's understanding of scientific revolutions see Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science, trans. Alexander T. Levine (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1993), pp. 201–206.
Mayr defines population thinking as follows: “Living nature does not consist of types but of variable populations in which each individual is unique” (Mayr, “Epilogue” [above, n. 53], p. 124). The first full elaboration (1959) of the notion of population thinking by Mayr can be found in “Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology” (above, n. 34), p. 2. On the notion of “hopeful monsters,” see Richard Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 390.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 225.
Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist” (above, n. 9), p. 285.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 19.
Lovejoy, Great Chain of Being (above, n. 25), p. 19.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 829.
Ernst Mayr, “Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology,” in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal, ed. Betty J. Meggers (Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), p. 8.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 829–831.
LudwikFleck, Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache: Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1935); English trans., Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, ed. Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K. Merton (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Pres, 1979), p. 39.
Ernst Mayr, “Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology,” in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal, ed. Betty J. Meggers (Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), p. 180. There is an interesting crossing over of ideas: Kuhn holds that science is characterized by “saltations” and is a community-based activity, while Mayr maintains that there is “gradualism” in science and it is based primarily on the activity of individuals. For an account of a scientific controversy as a group phenomenon, see Hull, Science as a Process (above n. 18), pp. 232–276.
“Isolating a few individuals (the ‘founders’) from a variable population which is situated in the midst of the stream of genes which flows ceaselessly through every widespread species will produce a sudden change of the genetic environment of most loci... Indeed, it may have the charater of a veritable ‘genetic revolution’” (Ernst Mayr, “Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution,” in Evolution as a Process, ed. Julian Huxley, A. C. Hardy, and E. B. Ford (London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), p. 170).
Bynum, “Written Authority of Ernst Mayr” (above, n. 105), p. 585.
Michael Ruse, review of One Long Argument by Ernst Mayr, Amer. Sci., 81 (1993), 199.
Kuhn, “History of Science” (above, n. 77),. 110.
“Mayr is, of course, exceptionally well qualified to comment on his subject, for his affinity with Darwin is a deep one: he has worked as a field naturalist himself, andhe served as one of the architects of the modern synthesis” (Herbert, “Essay Review” [above, n. 60], p. 119). See also Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin” (above, n. 4), p. 282.
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931), p. 16.
G. C. Williams, review of the Evolutionary Synthesis, ed. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine, Quart. Rev. Biol., 56 (1981), 445.
“Whig history constructs the past as a series of steps leading to the present and awards points to past figures who ‘got it right,’ or who thought most nearly like we do today” (Bynum, “Written Authority of Ernst Mayr” [above, n. 105], p. 585).
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931), pp. 31–32.
Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), p. 16.
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: Bell, 1931), p. v.
For a critique of the historicist position, see David L. Hull, “In Defense of Presentism,” Hist. theory, 18 (1979), 1–15; Edward Harrison, “Whigs, Prigs and Historians of Science,” Nature, 329 (1987), 213–214; Michael Ruse, “Booknotes,” Biol. Phil., 2 (1987), 377–381; Shapin, “Discipline and Bounding” (above, n. 111), p. 358. On Mayr and ‘Whiggism’ see David L. Hull, “Ernst Mayr's Influence on the History and Philosophy of Biology: A Personal Memoir,” Biol. Phil., 9 (1994), 378–382.
Ernst Mayr, “When Is Historiography Whiggish?” J. Hist. Ideas, 51 (1990), 303.
Ernst Mayr, “When Is Historiography Whiggish?” J. Hist. Ideas, 51 (1990), 303. See also Phillip R. Sloan, “Essay Review: Ernst Mayr on the History of Biology,” J. Hist. Biol., 18 (1985), 145–153.
Jane Maienschein, review of Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, by Ernst Mayr, Isis, 80 (1989), 569. Amazingly enough, the only really scornful attack on Mayr's historiographical abilities that I found was articulated by a paleontologist, Niles Eldredge, according to whom Mayr's Growth of Biological Thought is supposed to be “‘bad’ history,” because it is “not the objective analysis of a detached historian” (Niles Eldredge, “A Biological Urge to Oversimplify,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 7, 1982, p. P3). A similar point (but without the sarcasm) is raised by John C. Greene, “Warfare of Nature,” Times Higher Educ. Suppl., 29 May 1992, p. 25.
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 1.
Mayr, “Lamarck Revisited” (above, n. 29), p. 55.
See, for example, Kuhn, “History of Science” (above, n. 77); Mayr, GBT, pp. 13–14; Harrison, “Whigs, Prigs and Historians of Science” (above, n. 148).
Douglas J. Futuyma, “A Synthetic History of Biology” (above, n. 7), p. 842.
Philip Kitcher, “The Importance of Being Ernst,” Nature, 333 (1988), 25. See also Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin” (above, n. 4), p. 283.
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Junker, T. Factors shaping Ernst Mayr's concepts in the history of biology. J Hist Biol 29, 29–77 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00129696
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00129696