Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences
edited by Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich
University of Chicago Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-0-226-56987-1 | eISBN: 978-0-226-57007-5 | Paper: 978-0-226-56990-1 Library of Congress Classification QH26.D74 2018 Dewey Decimal Classification 570.92
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences, editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers.
From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Oren Harman is the chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University, Israel, and senior fellow at the Van Leer Institute. Michael R. Dietrich is a professor in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh.
REVIEWS
"Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life joins Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology (Yale, 2008) and Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology (Chicago, 2013) in presenting looks at individual scientists who are non-standard in illuminating ways. Harmon and Dietrich have enticed their contributors to think about the role of individual scientists and how they helped shape science in society. They then pull together the individual biographies with valuable cross-cutting interpretive introductions. Joan Roughgarden’s epilogue captures the book’s message beautifully. To those who feel they don’t quite fit: “If you’re a scientist dreamer, let it happen; don’t fight it. Really, you have no choice. It’s what you are. In the end, you might be correct, after all. And remember, be a disciplined dreamer. The scientist dreamer must aim to tell a true story, not a fantasy.” To the rest of us: “If you’re not a scientific dreamer yourself, but know someone who is, be kind to them.” We should be kind because the dreamers stimulate us all ro think and be better than we otherwise would. The brilliant Lynn Margulis might have infuriated almost everybody, as the editors note, but she also provoked us in the best possible ways and changed our thinking about life."
— Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
"Sciences stay lively only thanks to regular injections of big, bold thinking and doing. Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences tells the stories of some of biology's greatest boundary–pushers, from Lamarck (who gave biology its name) to Lovelock and beyond. Prepare to be instructed, inspired, amazed, and—occasionally—appalled."
— Gregory Radick, University of Leeds
"This spirited collection not only provides intriguing biographies of life scientists whose histories have often been overlooked, but also forces us to revisit our usual narratives of how biological change is generated to consider the role of true novelty, especially in the hands and minds of quirky, eccentric, and oftentimes plain ornery characters in the right places at opportune times. Scientific advances come not only from experiments and theories but from creative and even outlandish dreams, and this volume brings together some of these radical dreamers and their stories to generate as many new questions as are answered, much as these scientists did in their own times."
— Rachel A. Ankeny, University of Adelaide, Australia
"They may infuriate even as they inspire; destabilize, as well as advance. The visionaries of biology, note science historians Oren Harman and Michael Dietrich, are masters of 'dramatically bold, even fantastic' thinking about big problems. This compelling edited volume explores the work of 19 innovators, including Iranian-American cancer researcher Mina Bissell, who studies tumour microenvironments; Canadian John Todd, who engineered solar aquatic sewage treatment; and Peter Kropotkin, the Russian biologist who championed mutualism in nature during the Darwinian revolution."
— Nature
"The volume is insightful and engaging; readers will come away with a desire to explore the lives and works of these scientists in more detail. . . . Recommended."
— CHOICE
"The editors provide 18 life stories among six parts of the life sciences to illustrate scientific novelty. These include evolutionists, medicalists, molecularists, ecologists, ethologists, and systematizers...the editors provide an abundance or material for those in the history, sociology, and philosophy of science. Biologists will also be rewarded with many anecdotes and biographical details of the lives of scientists that are missing from classroom presentations."
— Elof Axel Carlson, The Quarterly Review of Biology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Perchance to Dream—Fostering Novelty in the Life Sciences
Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich
I The Evolutionists
1 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: Biological Visionary
Richard W. Burkhardt Jr.
2 Ernst Haeckel: A Dream Transformed
Robert J. Richards
3 Peter Kropotkin: Anarchist, Revolutionary, Dreamer
Oren Harman
II The Medicalists
4 Mary Lasker: Citizen Lobbyist for Medical Research
Kirsten E. Gardner
5 Jonas Salk: American Hero, Scientific Outcast
Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
6 The Origins of “Dynamic Reciprocity”: Mina Bissell’s Expansive Picture of Cancer Causation
Anya Plutynski
III The Molecularists
7 W. Ford Doolittle: Evolutionary Provocations and a Pluralistic Vision
Maureen A. O’Malley
8 Collecting Dreams in the Molecular Sciences: Margaret Dayhoff and The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure
Bruno J. Strasser
9 Neanderthals in Space: George Church’s Modest Steps toward Possible Futures
Luis Campos
IV The Ecologists
10 From New Alchemy to Living Machines: John Todd’s Dreams of Ecological Engineering
Michael R. Dietrich and Laura L. Lovett
11 Stephen Hubbell and the Paramount Power of Randomness
Philippe Huneman
12 Rachel Carson: Prophet for the Environment
Janet Browne
V The Ethologists
13 Jane Goodall: She Dreamed of Tarzan
Dale Peterson
14 Francis Crick and the Problem of Consciousness
Rick Grush
15 David Sloan Wilson: Visionary, Idealist, Ideologue
Mark E. Borrello
VI The Systematizers
16 D’Arcy Thompson: Archetypical Visionary
Tim Horder
17 James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis: “A New Look at Life on Earth” . . . for the Life and the Earth Sciences
Sébastien Dutreuil
18 Big Dreams for Small Creatures: Ilana and Eugene Rosenberg’s Path to the Hologenome Theory
Ehud Lamm
Epilogue: The Scientist Dreamer
Joan Roughgarden
List of Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences
edited by Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich
University of Chicago Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-0-226-56987-1 eISBN: 978-0-226-57007-5 Paper: 978-0-226-56990-1
What are the conditions that foster true novelty and allow visionaries to set their eyes on unknown horizons? What have been the challenges that have spawned new innovations, and how have they shaped modern biology? In Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences, editors Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich explore these questions through the lives of eighteen exemplary biologists who had grand and often radical ideas that went far beyond the run-of-the-mill science of their peers.
From the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who coined the word “biology” in the early nineteenth century, to the American James Lovelock, for whom the Earth is a living, breathing organism, these dreamers innovated in ways that forced their contemporaries to reexamine comfortable truths. With this collection readers will follow Jane Goodall into the hidden world of apes in African jungles and Francis Crick as he attacks the problem of consciousness. Join Mary Lasker on her campaign to conquer cancer and follow geneticist George Church as he dreams of bringing back woolly mammoths and Neanderthals. In these lives and the many others featured in these pages, we discover visions that were sometimes fantastical, quixotic, and even threatening and destabilizing, but always a challenge to the status quo.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Oren Harman is the chair of the Graduate Program in Science, Technology and Society at Bar Ilan University, Israel, and senior fellow at the Van Leer Institute. Michael R. Dietrich is a professor in the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh.
REVIEWS
"Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life joins Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology (Yale, 2008) and Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology (Chicago, 2013) in presenting looks at individual scientists who are non-standard in illuminating ways. Harmon and Dietrich have enticed their contributors to think about the role of individual scientists and how they helped shape science in society. They then pull together the individual biographies with valuable cross-cutting interpretive introductions. Joan Roughgarden’s epilogue captures the book’s message beautifully. To those who feel they don’t quite fit: “If you’re a scientist dreamer, let it happen; don’t fight it. Really, you have no choice. It’s what you are. In the end, you might be correct, after all. And remember, be a disciplined dreamer. The scientist dreamer must aim to tell a true story, not a fantasy.” To the rest of us: “If you’re not a scientific dreamer yourself, but know someone who is, be kind to them.” We should be kind because the dreamers stimulate us all ro think and be better than we otherwise would. The brilliant Lynn Margulis might have infuriated almost everybody, as the editors note, but she also provoked us in the best possible ways and changed our thinking about life."
— Jane Maienschein, Arizona State University
"Sciences stay lively only thanks to regular injections of big, bold thinking and doing. Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences tells the stories of some of biology's greatest boundary–pushers, from Lamarck (who gave biology its name) to Lovelock and beyond. Prepare to be instructed, inspired, amazed, and—occasionally—appalled."
— Gregory Radick, University of Leeds
"This spirited collection not only provides intriguing biographies of life scientists whose histories have often been overlooked, but also forces us to revisit our usual narratives of how biological change is generated to consider the role of true novelty, especially in the hands and minds of quirky, eccentric, and oftentimes plain ornery characters in the right places at opportune times. Scientific advances come not only from experiments and theories but from creative and even outlandish dreams, and this volume brings together some of these radical dreamers and their stories to generate as many new questions as are answered, much as these scientists did in their own times."
— Rachel A. Ankeny, University of Adelaide, Australia
"They may infuriate even as they inspire; destabilize, as well as advance. The visionaries of biology, note science historians Oren Harman and Michael Dietrich, are masters of 'dramatically bold, even fantastic' thinking about big problems. This compelling edited volume explores the work of 19 innovators, including Iranian-American cancer researcher Mina Bissell, who studies tumour microenvironments; Canadian John Todd, who engineered solar aquatic sewage treatment; and Peter Kropotkin, the Russian biologist who championed mutualism in nature during the Darwinian revolution."
— Nature
"The volume is insightful and engaging; readers will come away with a desire to explore the lives and works of these scientists in more detail. . . . Recommended."
— CHOICE
"The editors provide 18 life stories among six parts of the life sciences to illustrate scientific novelty. These include evolutionists, medicalists, molecularists, ecologists, ethologists, and systematizers...the editors provide an abundance or material for those in the history, sociology, and philosophy of science. Biologists will also be rewarded with many anecdotes and biographical details of the lives of scientists that are missing from classroom presentations."
— Elof Axel Carlson, The Quarterly Review of Biology
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Perchance to Dream—Fostering Novelty in the Life Sciences
Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich
I The Evolutionists
1 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: Biological Visionary
Richard W. Burkhardt Jr.
2 Ernst Haeckel: A Dream Transformed
Robert J. Richards
3 Peter Kropotkin: Anarchist, Revolutionary, Dreamer
Oren Harman
II The Medicalists
4 Mary Lasker: Citizen Lobbyist for Medical Research
Kirsten E. Gardner
5 Jonas Salk: American Hero, Scientific Outcast
Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs
6 The Origins of “Dynamic Reciprocity”: Mina Bissell’s Expansive Picture of Cancer Causation
Anya Plutynski
III The Molecularists
7 W. Ford Doolittle: Evolutionary Provocations and a Pluralistic Vision
Maureen A. O’Malley
8 Collecting Dreams in the Molecular Sciences: Margaret Dayhoff and The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure
Bruno J. Strasser
9 Neanderthals in Space: George Church’s Modest Steps toward Possible Futures
Luis Campos
IV The Ecologists
10 From New Alchemy to Living Machines: John Todd’s Dreams of Ecological Engineering
Michael R. Dietrich and Laura L. Lovett
11 Stephen Hubbell and the Paramount Power of Randomness
Philippe Huneman
12 Rachel Carson: Prophet for the Environment
Janet Browne
V The Ethologists
13 Jane Goodall: She Dreamed of Tarzan
Dale Peterson
14 Francis Crick and the Problem of Consciousness
Rick Grush
15 David Sloan Wilson: Visionary, Idealist, Ideologue
Mark E. Borrello
VI The Systematizers
16 D’Arcy Thompson: Archetypical Visionary
Tim Horder
17 James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis: “A New Look at Life on Earth” . . . for the Life and the Earth Sciences
Sébastien Dutreuil
18 Big Dreams for Small Creatures: Ilana and Eugene Rosenberg’s Path to the Hologenome Theory
Ehud Lamm
Epilogue: The Scientist Dreamer
Joan Roughgarden
List of Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE