A History of Biology PDF
Preview A History of Biology
a history of biology A History of Biology michel mor ange translated by teresa lavender fagan & joseph muise prince ton university press princet on & oxford En glish translation copyright © 2021 by Prince ton University Press Originally published in French as Une histoire de la biologie © Éditions du Seuil, 2016 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press . princeton . edu Published by Prince ton University Press 41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press . princeton . edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Morange, Michel, author. Title: A history of biology / Michel Morange ; translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan and Joseph Muise. Other titles: histoire de la biologie. En glish Description: Prince ton, NJ : Prince ton University Press, [2021] | Originally published in French as Une histoire de la biologie by Éditions du Seuil, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020035292 (print) | LCCN 2020035293 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691175409 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780691188782 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Biology— History. | Life sciences— History. Classification: LCC QH305 .M6713 2021 (print) | LCC QH305 (ebook) | DDC 570– dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020035292 LC ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020035293 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Editorial: Ingrid Gnerlich and Arthur Werneck Production Editorial: Kathleen Cioffi Jacket Design: Heather Hansen Production: Jacqueline Poirier Publicity: Sara Henning- Stout and Katie Lewis Copyeditor: Maia Vaswani This book has been composed in Arno Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Amer i ca 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface xv 1 Ancient Greece and Rome 1 The Facts 1 The Birth of Biology 1 Overview of Ancient Greek and Roman Biological Sciences 2 Hippocratic Medicine 3 Aristotle 4 Galen’s Physiology 8 Pliny the Elder’s Natu ral History 9 The Atomists 10 Historical Overview 11 The Role of Experimentation in Greek Science and Particularly in Life Sciences 11 Anaximander and the Atomists: The Futile Search for Pioneers 13 Con temporary Relevance 17 Mechanistic and Molecular Explanations 17 The Role of Analogy 18 v vi Contents The Beginnings of the Chain of Being 19 Pliny’s Legacy 20 Ever- Present Finalism 20 2 The Middle Ages and Arab- Muslim Science 22 The Facts 23 The Arab- Muslim World 23 The Middle Ages in the West 26 Historical Overview 28 Con temporary Relevance 31 Scientific Pro gress Is Not a Given 31 Less Obvious Contributions to the Development of Science 32 3 The Re nais sance (Sixteenth Century) 33 The Facts 34 Pro gress in Anatomy and Depictions of the Human Body 34 Books on Natu ral History 38 Alchemy in Medicine: From Paracelsus to Van Helmont 41 Historical Overview 45 A Fascination with Dissections 45 The Role of Alchemy 46 Changes in the Social Structure of Science 47 Con temporary Relevance 48 Finding the Right Distance from the Past 48 Contents vii New Techniques Bring New Sources of Error 50 Aging as a Form of Poisoning 50 4 The Age of Classicism (Seventeenth Century) 52 The Facts 52 The Discovery of Circulation 52 The Development of Quantitative Experiments 57 The Invention of the Microscope and Its Consequences 63 Historical Overview 67 The Not- So- Obvious Case of Circulation 67 The Mechanistic Model of Life and Its Limitations 67 The Incomprehensible Theory of Preformationism 69 Invisible and Indirect Changes 70 Con temporary Relevance 72 The Machines in Front of Us 72 Vestiges of Preformation Theory 72 Accepting the Plurality of Approaches in Biology 73 Translational Medicine Is Not New 73 5 The Enlightenment (Eigh teenth Century) 75 The Facts 75 Vitalism 75 Classification: Linnaeus versus Buffon 78 viii Contents Reproductive Physiology 86 The Role of Breathing Becomes Clear 94 Historical Overview 97 Variations on Vitalism 97 Classification versus Evolution 99 Classifying Humans 99 Priestley and Lavoisier: Only the First Step 100 Con temporary Relevance 101 A Natur al Classification? 101 Comparing Plants and Animals 102 Maupertuis, the Father of Self- Organization? 103 6 The Nineteenth Century (Part I): Embryology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, and Physiology 105 The Facts 106 Embryology Becomes an Established Discipline 106 The Emergence of Cell Theory 109 The Rise of Germ Theory 120 Physiology’s Golden Age 131 Historical Overview 143 The Roots of Cell Theory 143 Scholars Trapped by Their Own Philosophical Ideas? 145 The Tension between Chemical Explanations and Structural Models 150 Was Embryology Holding Out for Evolution? 151 1859: A Remarkable Year 151 Contents ix Con temporary Relevance 152 The Disappearance of Traditional Disciplines in Biology 153 The Endogenous or Exogenous Origins of Diseases 153 The Debate on Ce re bral Localization 155 7 The Nineteenth C entury (Part II): The Theory of Evolution, the Theory of Heredity, and Ecol ogy 157 The Facts 157 Lamarck: An Early Version of the Theory of Evolution 157 The Contribution of Georges Cuvier 163 The Second Wave of Transformism: Darwin 169 The Theory of Heredity 177 The Reception of Darwin’s Theory and the Eclipse of Darwinism 188 From Biogeography to Ecol ogy 199 Historical Overview 203 A Moving History 203 The Birth of a Science of Heredity 204 Biology: A Comparative Science, according to Auguste Comte 205 Darwinism and Ecol ogy: A Complex Relationship 206 Biogeography 208 The Epistemological Originality of the Darwinian Model of Natu ral Se lection 209
The list of books you might like
