The Growth of Biological Thought

by Mayr, Ernst

• ISBN13: 9780674364462
• ISBN10: 0674364465
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-01-22
• Publisher: Belknap Pr

Summary

No one in this century can speak with greater authority on the progress of ideas in biology than Ernst Mayr. And no book has ever established the life sciences so firmly in the mainstream of Western intellectual history as The Growth of Biological Thought. Ten years in preparation, this is a work of epic proportions, tracing the development of the major problems of biology from the earliest attempts to find order in the diversity of life, to modern research into the mechanisms of gene transmission.

Author Biography

Ernst Mayr is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University

Table of Contents

Introduction: How to write history of biology	p. 1
Subjectivity and bias	p. 9
Why study the history of biology?	p. 18
The place of biology in the sciences and its conceptual structure	p. 21
The nature of science	p. 21
Method in science	p. 25
The position of biology within the sciences	p. 32
How and why is biology different?	p. 36
Special characteristics of living organisms	p. 51
Reduction and biology	p. 59
Emergence	p. 63
The conceptual structure of biology	p. 67
A new philosophy of biology	p. 73
The changing intellectual milieu of biology	p. 83
Antiquity	p. 84
The Christian world picture	p. 91
The Renaissance	p. 94
The discovery of diversity	p. 99
Biology in the Enlightenment	p. 107
The rise of science from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century	p. 109
Divisive developments in the nineteenth century	p. 112
Biology in the twentieth century	p. 120
Major periods in the history of biology	p. 125
Biology and philosophy	p. 128
Biology today	p. 131
Diversity of Life
Macrotaxonomy, the science of classifying	p. 147
Aristotle	p. 149
The classification of plants by the ancients and the herbalists	p. 154
Downward classification by logical division	p. 158
Pre-Linnaean zoologists	p. 166
Carl Linnaeus	p. 171
Buffon	p. 180
A new start in animal classification	p. 182
Taxonomic characters	p. 185
Upward classification by empirical grouping	p. 190
Transition period (1758-1859)	p. 195
Hierarchical classifications	p. 205
Grouping according to common ancestry	p. 209
The decline of macrotaxonomic research	p. 217
Numerical phenetics	p. 221
Cladistics	p. 226
The traditional or evolutionary methodology	p. 233
New taxonomic characters	p. 235
Facilitation of information retrieval	p. 239
The study of diversity	p. 245
Microtaxonomy, the science of species	p. 251
Early species concepts	p. 254
The essentialist species concept	p. 256
The nominalistic species concept	p. 263
Darwin's species concept	p. 265
The rise of the biological species concept	p. 270
Applying the biological species concept to multidimensional species taxa	p. 286
The significance of species in biology	p. 295
Evolution
Origins without evolution	p. 301
The coming of evolutionism	p. 309
The French Enlightenment	p. 322
Evolution before Darwin	p. 343
Lamarck	p. 343
Cuvier	p. 363
England	p. 371
Lyell and uniformitarianism	p. 375
Germany	p. 387
Charles Darwin	p. 394
Darwin and evolution	p. 400
Alfred Russel Wallace	p. 417
The publication of the Origin	p. 423
Darwin's evidence for evolution and common descent	p. 426
Common descent and the natural system	p. 436
Common descent and geographical distribution	p. 439
Morphology as evidence for evolution and common descent	p. 455
Embryology as evidence for evolution and common descent	p. 469
The causation of evolution: natural selection	p. 477
The major components of the theory of natural selection	p. 481
The origin of the concept of natural selection	p. 488
The impact of the Darwinian revolution	p. 501
The resistance to natural selection	p. 510
Alternate evolutionary theories	p. 525
Diversity and synthesis of evolutionary thought	p. 535
The growing split among the evolutionists	p. 540
Advances in evolutionary genetics	p. 550
Advances in evolutionary systematics	p. 559
The evolutionary synthesis	p. 566
Post-synthesis developments	p. 571
Molecular biology	p. 574
Natural selection	p. 585
Unresolved issues in natural selection	p. 591
Modes of speciation	p. 600
Macroevolution	p. 607
The evolution of man	p. 620
Evolution in modern thought	p. 626
Variation and Its Inheritance
Early theories and breeding experiments	p. 633
Theories of inheritance among the ancients	p. 635
Mendel's forerunners	p. 641
Germ cells, vehicles of heredity	p. 652
The Schwann-Schleiden cell theory	p. 655
The meaning of sex and fertilization	p. 658
Chromosomes and their role	p. 673
The nature of inheritance	p. 681
Darwin and variation	p. 681
August Weismann	p. 698
Hugo de Vries	p. 707
Gregor Mendel	p. 710
The flowering of Mendelian genetics	p. 727
The rediscoverers of Mendel	p. 727
The classical period of Mendelian genetics	p. 731
The origin of new variation (mutation)	p. 738
The emergence of modern genetics	p. 744
The Sutton-Boveri chromosome theory	p. 747
Sex determination	p. 750
Morgan and the fly room	p. 752
Meiosis	p. 761
Morgan and the chromosome theory	p. 769
Theories of the gene	p. 777
Competing theories of inheritance	p. 784
The Mendelian explanation of continuous variation	p. 790
The chemical basis of inheritance	p. 808
The discovery of the double helix	p. 821
Genetics in modern thought	p. 826
Epilogue: Toward a science of science	p. 829
Scientists and the scientific milieu	p. 830
The maturation of theories and concepts	p. 839
Impediments to the maturation of theories and concepts	p. 843
The sciences and the external milieu	p. 848
Progress in science	p. 856
Notes	p. 861
References	p. 893
Glossary	p. 957
Index	p. 961
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