Axiomatic Natural Philosophy and the Emergence of Biology as a Science
Journal of the History of Biology 53 (3):379-422 (2020)
Abstract
Ernst Mayr argued that the emergence of biology as a special science in the early nineteenth century was possible due to the demise of the mathematical model of science and its insistence on demonstrative knowledge. More recently, John Zammito has claimed that the rise of biology as a special science was due to a distinctive experimental, anti-metaphysical, anti-mathematical, and anti-rationalist strand of thought coming from outside of Germany. In this paper we argue that this narrative neglects the important role played by the mathematical and axiomatic model of science in the emergence of biology as a special science. We show that several major actors involved in the emergence of biology as a science in Germany were working with an axiomatic conception of science that goes back at least to Aristotle and was popular in mid-eighteenth-century German academic circles due to its endorsement by Christian Wolff. More specifically, we show that at least two major contributors to the emergence of biology in Germany—Caspar Friedrich Wolff and Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus—sought to provide a conception of the new science of life that satisfies the criteria of a traditional axiomatic ideal of science. Both C.F. Wolff and Treviranus took over strong commitments to the axiomatic model of science from major philosophers of their time, Christian Wolff and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, respectively. The ideal of biology as an axiomatic science with specific biological fundamental concepts and principles thus played a role in the emergence of biology as a special science.Author Profiles
DOI
10.1007/s10739-020-09609-2
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Animal Languages in Eighteenth-Century German Philosophy and Science.Hein van den Berg - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 93:72-81.
References found in this work
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The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe.Robert J. Richards - 2010 - University of Chicago Press.
History of science and its rational reconstructions.Imre Lakatos - 1971 - In R. C. Buck & R. S. Cohen (eds.), PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. D. Reidel. pp. 91-108.