Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences PDF
Preview Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences
dreamers, visionaries, and revolutionaries in the life sciences Dreamers, Visionaries, and edited by oren harman and michael r. dietrich Revolutionaries in the The UniversiTy of ChiCago Press Chicago and London Life Sciences The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2018 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2018 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5 isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 56987- 1 (cloth) isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 56990- 1 (paper) isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 57007- 5 (e- book) Doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226570075.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data Names: Harman, Oren Solomon, editor. | Dietrich, Michael R., editor. Title: Dreamers, visionaries, and revolutionaries in the life sciences / edited by Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich. Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCn 2017057789 | isBn 9780226569871 (cloth : alk. paper) | isBn 9780226569901 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isBn 9780226570075 (e- book) Subjects: LCsh: Biologists—Biography. | Scientists—Biography. | Biology—Biography. | Science—Biography. Classification: LCC Qh26.D74 2018 | DDC 570.92—dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc .gov/ 2017057789 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). To Sam Silverstein, a dreamer and a friend — O. H. To Dick Lewontin, a revolutionary in the best way — M. R. D. contents Introduction: Perchance to Dream— Fostering Novelty in the Life Sciences 1 Oren Harman and Michael R. Dietrich part i: the evolutionists 1 Jean- Baptiste Lamarck: Biological Visionary 21 Richard W. Burkhardt Jr. 2 Ernst Haeckel: A Dream Transformed 35 Robert J. Richards 3 Peter Kropotkin: Anarchist, Revolutionary, Dreamer 51 Oren Harman part ii: the medicalists 4 Mary Lasker: Citizen Lobbyist for Medical Research 71 Kirsten E. Gardner 5 Jonas Salk: American Hero, Scientific Outcast 83 Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs 6 The Origins of “Dynamic Reciprocity”: Mina Bissell’s Expansive Picture of Cancer Causation 96 Anya Plutynski part iii: the molecularists 7 W. Ford Doolittle: Evolutionary Provocations and a Pluralistic Vision 113 Maureen A. O’Malley 8 Collecting Dreams in the Molecular Sciences: Margaret Dayhoff and The Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure 128 Bruno J. Strasser 9 Neanderthals in Space: George Church’s Modest Steps toward Possible Futures 143 Luis Campos part iv: the ecologists 10 From New Alchemy to Living Machines: John Todd’s Dreams of Ecological Engineering 163 Michael R. Dietrich and Laura L. Lovett 11 Stephen Hubbell and the Paramount Power of Randomness 176 Philippe Huneman 12 Rachel Carson: Prophet for the Environment 196 Janet Browne part v: the ethologists 13 Jane Goodall: She Dreamed of Tarzan 211 Dale Peterson 14 Francis Crick and the Problem of Consciousness 227 Rick Grush 15 David Sloan Wilson: Visionary, Idealist, Ideologue 238 Mark E. Borrello part vi: the systematizers 16 D’Arcy Thompson: Archetypical Visionary 257 Tim Horder 17 James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis: “A New Look at Life on Earth” . . . for the Life and the Earth Sciences 272 Sébastien Dutreuil 18 Big Dreams for Small Creatures: Ilana and Eugene Rosenberg’s Path to the Hologenome Theory 288 Ehud Lamm Epilogue: The Scientist Dreamer 305 Joan Roughgarden List of Contributors 309 Index 311 oren harman & michael r. dietrich introduction perchance to dream Fostering Novelty in the Life Sciences introduction Biology isn’t always kind to its dreamers. The status of “vi- sionary” is often granted in retrospect and usually when that vision has al- ready enjoyed some modicum of success. Even then, the moniker is often loaded. Lynn Margulis’s obituaries, to take one example, heralded her as a visionary, and rightly so. Her advocacy of endosymbiosis as a form of evolu- tionary innovation altered foundational principles of evolutionary change, and her pursuit of “unconventional” ideas is legendary.1 Yet even in death, the paleontologist and geologist Andrew Knoll remembered her as “a foun- tain of ideas— fertile, original, inspiring, contentious, and unedited.” As a person, “Lynn could infuriate her colleagues, but at least one of her proposals changed the way we think about life.”2 Infuriating but original, inspiring but contentious: Is the price of scientific novelty always so steep, the acknowledg- ment of innovation always so hard fought? Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences explores biolo- gists who had grand ideas that went beyond the “run of the mill” science of their peers. They each espoused theories, practices, or applications of science that were visionary, sometimes fantastical or even quixotic, but always chal- lenging, and even threatening and destabilizing. Our goal is to understand the conditions that fostered such scientists as they advanced genuine novelty, the challenges and imaginations that, from the nineteenth century and for- ward, helped to shape modern biology. Dreamers, Visionaries, and Revolutionaries in the Life Sciences completes our trilogy that began with Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology (Yale, 2008) and continued with Outsider Scientists: Routes to Innovation in Biology (Chi- cago, 2013). Some of the scientists we feature here might be considered “reb- els,” since they went against widely accepted tenets in their field, and some were undoubtedly “outsiders,” in that they weren’t trained as biologists. But “dreamers” deserve a category of their own. Uniquely, the last part of our tril- ogy concerns the conditions that fostered innovations in biological theories, methods, and practices. This is admittedly a more difficult category to define precisely compared to rebels, who attacked certain well-a rticulated icons, and outsiders, who came into biology from other fields and made a differ- 1
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