Bowler, Peter J., The Fontana History of The Environmental Sciences, London: Fontana, 1992; as The Norton History of The Environmental Sciences, New York: W.W. Norton, 1993
Bowler, Peter J., Life's Splendid Drama, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996
Desmond, Adrian, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine and Reform in Radical London, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989
Foster, John W. (editor), Nature in Ireland: A Scientific and Cultural History, Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1997
Geison, Gerald L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: the Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978
Mayr, Ernst, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity Evolution and Inheritance, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982
Nordenskiöld, Erik, The History of Biology, A Survey, London: Knopf, 1929.
Rehbock, Philip F., The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983
Richards, Robert J., Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987
Ruse, Michael, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Strick, James E., Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates on Spontaneous Generation, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000
It is somewhat surprising that there is no single volume dedicated to the history of British biology since its genesis in the works of John Ray in the mid-1600's. Works such as NORDENSKIÖLD and MAYR can be usefully consulted by any reader who is willing to sift British from Continental and American influences. These works are not without their problems. Nordenskiöld's volume suffers from a dismissal of the impact of Darwinian ideas, the study of which has preoccupied historians of biology since the centenary in 1959 and has lead to the birth of what has become the “Darwin Industry.” As Peter Bowler has pointed out in a number of works, until the Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1930's, biologists were effectively working within a non-Darwinian framework, which encompassed such ideas as Neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis, and Nordenskiold cannot be faulted for his viewpoint as it was representative of the majority of working biologists during his time. Mayr, writing with hindsight as one of the architects of that synthesis, has a somewhat Whiggish internalist approach to the subject matter, one which greatly contrasts with the approaches of the other works to be surveyed herein. Much more satisfying is BOWLER's survey of the environmental sciences. Bowler provides a study which nicely highlights the interdependency between the various branches of the natural sciences, eschewing the balkanization that is so typical of modern studies of scientific thought. Although not exclusively British in focus, this is an historical account which neatly melds the "history of ideas" and socio-cultural approaches to the historiography of science.
Given the general lack of surveys of British biology, the remainder of this review will highlight some of the more interesting specific studies. Many studies have largely concerned themselves with evolutionary thought, Darwinism, and the post-1950's genetic "revolution" mid-wifed by Crick and Watson. These topics are reviewed elsewhere in these volumes. No attempt is made to provide the reader with an exhaustive account of available works - it will suffice to provide a sampler of some of the best scholarship in recent times. This scholarship has concentrated on the interfaces between Darwinism, evolutionary thought, biogeography, psychology, medicine, and natural history. In so doing, these works also highlight the increasing professionalization of the natural sciences during the past two hundred years, with a subsequent increase in theoretical content and experimental sophistication.
In Britain, natural history first became a subject of serious scholarship in the late Seventeenth Century. Initial concerns were primary taxonomic, and resulted in catalogues of what was seen as the Creator’s work. REHBOCK documents how the developing science of biology entered a relatively quiet phase as it became obsessed with collection and classification, rather than explanation, resulting in a science that was largely devoid of theory. In his work devoted to early Eighteenth century biology, he demonstrates the influence of continental Idealism (with its pattern-seeking tendencies) on such researchers as Robert Knox, Richard Owen and Edward Forbes, and highlights the fact that many of these idealistic naturalists were Scottish or had an Edinburgh training. Further concentrating on the work of Forbes, Rehbock outlines the development of a second strand in pre-Darwinian British biology, that of "distribution studies," an area which, under the guidance of A.R. Wallace, would become biogeography as we know it today. Importantly, Rehbock notes that Darwin's theories stemmed in part from his rejection of Continental idealism and his interest in the flowering work on distribution.
In another work highlighting the influence of Scottish thinking, DESMOND illustrates the synergy between biology and evolutionary thinking in the development of medical teaching in London in the period before Darwin. In what is probably one of the premiere examples of modern historiography of science, Desmond charts the development of non-conformist medical reformers who, while seeking to wrest medicine from the upper-classes, embued it with radical ideas such as evolution and spontaneous generation. As is his style, Desmond highlights the political nature of the actions of many of the reformers, thus significantly expanding the study of scientific ideas within their social context.
GEISON takes the development of bio-medical thinking a stage further in his landmark study of the physiologist Michael Foster and his work in developing physiology at Cambridge. As he shows, under the influence of Continental ideas, British physiology had stagnated in the mid-1800's, with primacy being given to anatomical and morphological studies, experimentation being largely undervalued. Along with Thomas Henry Huxley, Foster was responsible in the Late Victorian period for the transformation of British biology into a science that was strongly experimental, exhibiting the scholarly apparatus of professional societies and the organs we see today. With this in place, biology became available as a formal degree in British universities, where it previously survived as elective coursework.
Such concerns about professionalisation are further discussed in STRICK, whose examination of the debates on spontaneous generation and the origin of life offers a challenge to previously held notions within the history of microbiology. Strick demonstrates that, because of its earlier connection with radical politics, spontaneous generation was seen by Huxley and Darwin as an idea that would prevent the advancement of evolutionary biology as a part of the increasing cultural authority of science within Victorian society. To this end, Huxley and others actively pursued a "Darwinian party line," which sought to exclude the theories of Henry Charles Bastian, even though Bastian was a rising star amoung the young Darwinians.
Just as physiology, medicine and microbiology became influenced by evolutionary ideas, the developing science of psychology became "Darwinized" in the latter part of the Nineteenth century. In a work that has become the standard introduction to the study of the human mind in the Victorian period, RICHARDS shows how Darwin and Herbert Spencer felt that their evolutionary insights could be used to explain morality and ethics while refusing to negate their importance to the human species. In documenting the development of human psychology in the period after the publication of The Descent of Man, Richards shows how such biologists as George Romanes and St. George Mivart wrestled with the implications of Darwinism for the status of the human mind. Interestingly, Richards himself utilises a Darwinian analysis of the history of ideas in his work, an approach that has received some criticism.
In a study that has generated some controvery among biologists and historians, RUSE has outlined the history of evolutionary biology, highlighting the underlying belief in social and biological progress apparently exhibited by biologists both today and in the past. Valuable for its thumb-nail sketches of many figures (starting with Erasmus Darwin and ending with the likes of John Maynard-Smith), Ruse's work also nicely indicates how non-biological factors can influence the form of theories developed by scientists. It is, however, worth noting that in this and subsequent works, Ruse stresses that he has little sympathy for the social constructivist school of science studies. He firmly believes that (evolutionary) biology has become more scientific and less socially influenced over the past two hundred years.
As BOWLER perceptively points out in Life's Splendid Drama, historians of biology have largely concentrated on studying the debates centered around natural selection and heredity in the period between 1859 and 1940, while the most dominant project among practising evolutionary biologists during that same period was the reconstruction of the “tree of life” being undertaken by morphologists, paleontologists and biogeographers. In partly rectifying this skewed vision, Bowler has presented an often illuminating account of early Twentieth Century biology in Britain, as biologists manuvered to remove any taint of the perceived amateurism of old-fashioned field naturalism. In so doing, Bowler raises oft-omitted figures such as Edwin Ray Lankester into the spotlight. Lankester (like Huxley and Foster) was particularly involved in reforming biological education in light of the developing evolutionary and experimental paradigms, and indeed often sparred with Bastian. He remains a surprisingly neglected figure in the history of biology.
It comes as no surprise that biological studies within Ireland have received relatively little attention - as indeed has the history of Irish science in general. The collection of papers edited by FOSTER aims to remedy this, yet largely concerns itself with accounts of the major personalities within areas such as ornithology, mammalogy and ichthyology. While the rich tradition of natural history within the island is highlighted, we receive little illumination as to the laboratory-based sciences that must have been occurring in the second city of the Empire.
As can be seen above, the current literature can be woven into a somewhat continuous narrative that highlights the scientific and cultural context of the development of Britsh biology, and the overall changes in interests and ideas. The reader seeking a single work that exhaustively examines these (and other) themes within British biology is currently searching in vain, and it can only be hoped that the coming years will see the publication of such a volume.
John M. Lynch
See also: Darwin, Charles Robert; DNA and Genetics; Evolution; Huxley, Thomas Henry; Medicine, disease and health, history of;