ISHPSSB 2003 Vienna Programme, Session Abstracts and Abstracts

JULY 16-20, KLI and University of Vienna

President (2001-2003)

Lindley Darden

Past President (1999-2001)

Richard Burian

President Elect (2003-2005)

Michael R. Dietrich

Secretary

Chris Young

Treasurer

Keith Benson

Executive Council 2003

Jane Maienschein

Greg Mittman

Lenny Moss

Executive Council 2005

Ana Barahona

Christiane Groeben

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

Program Committee

Rob Skipper (Chair)

Werner Callebaut

Heather Douglas

Joan Fujimura

Christiane Groeben

Tom Kane

Michael Lynch

Phil Sloan

Betty Smocovitis

Local Arrangements

Astrid Juette

Werner Callebaut

Newsletter

Chris Young

Webmaster

Rob Skipper

Student Representative

Terry Sullivan

Education Committee

Steve Fifield,

Peter Taylor

Membership

Keith Benson

THE PROGRAM AT A GLANCE

______________________________________________________________

Wednesday, July 16

9-3 PM 3 PM
3 PM
6 PM

JULY 16-20
KLI and University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

President (2001-2003) – Lindley Darden Past President (1999-2001) – Richard Burian President Elect (2003-2005) – Michael R. Dietrich

Secretary – Chris Young Treasurer – Keith Benson

Executive Council 2003

Jane Maienschein Greg Mittman Lenny Moss

Program Committee

Rob Skipper (Chair) Werner Callebaut Heather Douglas Joan Fujimura Christiane Groeben Tom Kane Michael Lynch Phil Sloan Betty Smocovitis

Executive Council 2005

Ana Barahona Christiane Groeben Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

Local Arrangements

Astrid Juette Werner Callebaut

Newsletter – Chris Young
Webmaster – Rob Skipper
Student Representative – Terry Sullivan Education Committee – Steve Fifield, Peter Taylor Membership – Keith Benson

ISHPSSB ONLINE: http://www/phil.vt.edu/ishpssb

THE PROGRAM AT A GLANCE

______________________________________________________________

Wednesday, July 16

9-3 PM 3 PM
3 PM
6 PM

Teaching Workshop (Rooms LR3, LR4) Registration Begins (Aula)
ISHPSSB Council Meeting 1 (LR8) Welcome Reception (Garden)

Thursday, July 17

8-5 PM 9-10:30 AM 11-12:30 PM 2-3:30 PM 4-5:30 PM
8 PM

Registration (Aula) Presidential Plenary (LH) Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions
Town Hall Reception

Friday, July 18

8-5 PM 9-10:30 AM 11-12:30 PM 12:00 PM 2-3:30 PM 4-5:30 PM 5:30 PM Evening

Registration (Aula)
Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions
Backstage at the Journals (Aula) Parallel Sessions

Parallel Sessions
ISHPSSB Business Meeting (LH) Various tours

Saturday, July 19

9-10:30 AM 11-12:30 PM 12:00 PM 2-3:30 PM 4-5:30 PM

8 PM

Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions
ISHPSSB Council Meeting 2 (TBA)
Parallel Sessions
Evening Plenary: Stephen J. Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (LH) Banquet

Sunday, July 20

9-10:30 AM 11-12:30 PM 2:30 PM 3:00 PM

Parallel Sessions
Parallel Sessions
KLI tour: bus to Altenberg leaves
Konrad Lorenz Research Station (KLF) tour: bus to Grünau leaves

Tuesday, July 22

9:30 AM Mendelianum tour: bus to Brno leaves

iii

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

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9-3 PM 3 PM
3 PM
6 PM

8-5 PM 9-10:30 AM

11-12:30 PM

Wednesday, July 16

Teaching Workshop (Rooms LR3, LR4) Registration begins (Aula)
ISHPSSB Council Meeting 1 (LR8) Welcome Reception (Garden)

Thursday, July 17

Registration (Aula) Presidential Plenary (LH)

Parallel Sessions

I Interpreting Evolutionary Theory (LR1)
II Biologists in Policy-Making (LR4)
III Biological Information (LR7)
IV Reconfiguring Knowledge (LR2)
V Biology and Gender (LR8)
VI Zoos in Central Europe (LR6)
VII Making Sense of Interlevel Causation (LR9)
VIII Fifty Years of the Molecular Biology of Behavior (LR10)
IX History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (LR3)
X Genetics in History (LR5)

Parallel Sessions

I Experiments in Experimentalism I (LR4)
II History of 20th Century Biology (LR8)
III A Cultural History of Heredity I (LR1)
IV Picturing Eggs, Embryos, and Cells I: Eggs and Embryos in Situ (LR2)
V Complexity: What is it Good For? I (LR5)
VI Konrad Lorenz and Company (LR6)
VII Genetics and Policy-making (LR10)
VIII The Extended Phenotype Revisited I (LR9)
IX Biological Modeling I (LR7)
X Ecology Transformed (LR3)

Parallel Sessions

I Experiments in Experimentalism II (LR8)
II Contingency and Explanation (LR6)
III A Cultural History of Heredity II (LR1)
IV Picturing Eggs, Embryos, and Cells II: Cells and Tissues in Motion (LR2)
V Complexity: What is it Good For? II (LR7)
VI Women in Early Genetics (LR3)
VII The Extended Phenotype Revisited II (LR9)
VIII History and Philosophy of Anthropology (LR5)
IX Biological Modeling II (LR10)
X Biology and ‘Naturalness’ in Organic Agriculture (LR4)

Town Hall Reception

2-3:30 PM

4-5:30 PM

8 PM

8-5 PM 9-10:30 AM

12:00 PM 11-12:30 PM

Registration (Aula)

Parallel Sessions

I Radiobiology in the Atomic Age (LR1)
II Evolution and Development I (LR7)
III Philosophy of Cognitive Science I (LR8)
IV Modes of Research in Biology (LR2)
V Animal Communication (LR6)
VI Metaphor and Communication I (LR10)
VII Genes, Genomes, and Genetic Elements I (LR9)
VIII Functions and Teleological Explanation I (LR3)
IX Biology and Ethics/Epistemology I (LR5)

Backstage at the Journals (Aula)

Parallel Sessions

I Karl Pearson, Ronald Fisher, and the Statistical Roots of Biology (LR7)
II Evolution and Development II (LR1)
III Philosophy of Cognitive Science II (LR8)
IV Endangered Species, Threatened Paradigms (LR4)
V Recent Work on Pluralism and the Levels of Selection (LR6)
VI Metaphor and Communication II (LR10)
VII Genes, Genomes, and Genetic Elements II (LR9)
VIII Functions and Teleological Explanation II (LR3)
IX Biology and Ethics/Epistemology II (LR5)
X History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of 18th-19th C. Biology I (LR2)

Parallel Sessions

I Biology and Anthropology I (LR8)
II The Mutual Shaping of Science and Science Education I (LR5)
III Visual Zoology on Wall Charts (LR6)
IV Biology, Biotechnology and Policy (LR4)
V Evolution and Politics I (LR9)
VI Lorenz’ Concept of Instinct (LR7)
VII Life, Metaphysics, and Biosemiotics I (LR10)
VIII Developmental Regulation I (LR1)
IX Fitness, Drift, Evolutionary Theory (LR2)
X History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of 18th-19th C. Biology II (LR3)

Parallel Sessions

I Biology and Anthropology II (LR8)
II The Mutual Shaping of Science and Science Education II (LR5)
III Exhibiting Humans and Animals (LR7)
IV Digital History of Biology (LR6)
V Evolution and Politics II (LR9)
VI Philosophy and Ecology (LR3)
VII Life, Metaphysics, and Biosemiotics II (LR10)
VIII Developmental Regulation II (LR1)
IX Science in its Social Context (LR4)
X Metascience from a Biological Point of View (LR2)

ISHPSSB Business Meeting (LH) Various tours

2-3:30 PM

4-5:30 PM

5:30 PM Evening

Friday, July 18

9-10:30 AM

Parallel Sessions

I Issues in Sociocultural Evolution I (LR1)
II Biology of Human Behavior I (LR2)
III Challenging the Essentialist Story about the History of Taxonomy I (LR6)
IV Indeterminism and Evolution (LR7)
V European Roots of Evolutionary Psychology (LR8)
VI Biology and Education I (LR4)
VII Trajectories of Drugs (LR3)
VIII Topographies of Knowledge Production in Aquatic Ecology I (LR5)
IX William Bateson and the Suppression of Epigenetic Biology (LR9)
X Biosemiotics (LR10)

ISHPSSB Council Meeting 2 (TBA)

Parallel Sessions

I Issues in Sociocultural Evolution II (LR1)
II Biology of Human Behavior II (LR2)
III Challenging the Essentialist Story about the History of Taxonomy II (LR6)
IV Perspectives on Population I (LR9)
V Microbial Challenges (LR3)
VI Biology and Education II (LR8)
VII Bioinformatics and the Transformation of Biomedical Research (LR7)
VIII Topographies of Knowledge Production in Aquatic Ecology II (LR5)
IX Biology and Metaphysics I (LR10)

Parallel Sessions

I The Romantic Conception of Life (LR6)
II Ecology and Environmental Values (LR8)
III Inheritance and Evolution (LR7)
IV Perspectives on Population II (LR9)
V Naples as an Evolutionary Niche (LR5)
VI Beyond Lorenz (LR1)
VII Sex, Gender, and Immunology (LR2)
VIII Emergence and Mechanisms in Biochemical Networks (LR3)
IX Biology and Metaphysics II (LR10)

Evening Plenary: Stephen J. Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (LH) Banquet

12:00 PM 11-12:30 PM

2-3:30 PM

4-5:30 PM 8 PM

Saturday, July 19

9-10:30 AM

11-12:30 PM

2:30 PM 3:00 PM

9:30 AM

Parallel Sessions

I Darwin (LR1)
II Biohistory – Neo-Darwinism’s Last Frontier (LR2)
III Alternative Evolutionary Theories I (LR5)
IV Autonomy: A Key Concept I (LR6)
V 'Race' in Theories of Human Origins and Diversity (LR7)
VI Science and Policy: International Perspectives I (LR3)
VII Dimensions of Genomics (LR9)
VIII Biology and Meaning I (LR8)
IX Biological Hierarchies I (LR10)

Parallel Sessions

I Boundaries in Biomedicine (LR1)
II Scientific Change from a Biological Point of View (LR2)
III Alternative Evolutionary Theories II (LR5)
IV Autonomy: A Key Concept II (LR6)
V Is There a Kantian Tradition in Biology? (LR9)
VI Science and Policy: International Perspectives II (LR3)
VII Between Gender, Politics, and Biology (LR7)
VIII Biology and Meaning II (LR8)
IX Biological Hierarchies II (LR10)

KLI tour: bus to Altenberg leaves
Konrad Lorenz Research Station (KLF) tour: bus to Grünau leaves

Tuesday, July 22

Mendelianum tour: bus to Brno leaves

Sunday, July 20

vii

ABSTRACTS

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Wednesday, 16 July

9-3 PM, LR 3, LR4 Teaching Workshop 'Biology and Society' Programs:

Preparing Students for Biology in Social Context

_______________________________________________________________________________

In a variety of local and global issues, including environmental quality, agriculture, health care, biotechnology, and international relations, the biological sciences are interwoven with social, eco- nomic, and political concerns. Traditional undergraduate biology programs fail to critically address the social contexts of science, and programs in the history, philosophy, or social studies of biology may not foster adequate understandings of biology subject matter. Are 'biology and society' pro- grams promising ways to prepare future policy-makers, educators, biologists, and citizens to un- derstand and constructively influence the complex issues of biology in social context?

In this interactive workshop, participants will examine a variety of goals, topics, instructional approaches, and challenges for biology and society programs. Participants will hear from col- leagues who have taught biology and society courses, and have a chance to design their own biol- ogy and society course syllabus. Presenters and topics will include:

Rivers Singleton, U of Delaware, USA—Biology and society: Some idiosyncratic definitions
Jim Collins, Arizona State U, USA—Challenges of supporting biology and society programs

at departmental, institutional and national levels

• Jane Maienschein, Arizona State U, USA—The Biology and Society Program at Arizona State University (see: http://lsvl.la.asu.edu/biosoc/)

• Henny van der Windt, U of Groningen, The Netherlands—Efforts to bridge the gap between biology and social-ethical perspectives at the University of Groningen.

• Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State U, USA —The role of history of biology in a biology and society curriculum; designing a biology and society course

Organized by Steve Fifield, Chair of the ISHPSSB Education Committee.

Thursday, 17 July

9-10:30 AM, LH

Presidential Plenary

History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology: Where Are We and Were Are We Going?

_______________________________________________________________________________

• Opening Remarks, Lindley Darden, ISHPSSB 2001-2003 President, U of Maryland, USA

• Welcome from local hosts, Werner Callebaut, Scientific Manager, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and Astrid Juette, Executive Manager, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research

• Presentation of the Marjorie Grene Prize: Winner: Kevin Elliott; Presenter: Pamela Henson, Grene Prize Committee

• The Double Face of Janus: Bringing Together History of Medicine and History of Biology, Bernardino Fantini, Editor of History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Geneva Medical School, Switzerland

• History of Biology Today, Jane Maienschein, Co-editor of Journal of the History of Biology, Arizona State U, USA

In 1968, Everett MENDELSOHN started the Journal of the History of Biology because he felt the time had come for biology to take its place alongside the physical sciences within the history of science. Yet the history of biology only gradually assumed a significant role at History of Science Society meetings in the USA, in general journals, or in faculty positions. Some historians of biol- ogy have felt more comfortable at ISH, PSA, or Biology meetings than at HSS. Yet now those in other areas complain that the history of biology has 'taken over', just as physical scientists com- plain that biologists are taking over NSF funds. What is the history of biology such that it is per- ceived as having grown from barely visible to threateningly dominant in just a few decades? Why has it not developed stronger and more robust connections with the history of medicine, psychol- ogy, and other related fields? Why the apparent impulse to speciate separate fields? Where is the history of biology going?

• Philosophy of Biology Tomorrow, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Associate Editor of Biology and Philosophy, Stanford U, USA

I will briefly tie together some promising themes in recent philosophy of biology—themes which I hope will be explored further in the future. This will be done by linking some specific projects of philosophical analysis with some general ideas about scientific language and modeling.

• Social Studies of Biology Today, Michael Lynch, Editor, Social Studies of Science, Cornell U, USA

Currently, there is no bounded sub-field of social studies of biology. There is, however, a growing number of social and cultural studies that focus on particular developments in biology, biotechnol- ogy, and medicine. The studies are difficult to compartmentalize by topic area, partly because they tend to reject distinctions between disciplines, as well as between pure and applied research, and science and technology. This rejection of 'boundaries' does not imply an undifferentiated view of

'science'; quite the opposite, it implies that 'technoscience' is far too differentiated to be meaning- fully compartmentalized in terms of biology, bioengineering, medicine, etc. An all-too-brief re- view will be given of current research on biology and biotechnology.

• History of the Life Sciences at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

Most of the projects of Department III of the MPI for the History of Science (Director: Hans-Jörg RHEINBERGER) are situated in the realm of the biological and medical sciences between the 18th and the 20th century. The overarching interest in pursuing these projects is, however, not confined to disciplinary boundaries and not dominated by disciplinary questions. We are interested in the historical and epistemological conditions of scientific innovation and their relation to the history of the material culture and the practical dynamics of science. The projects can be grouped around three organizing centers: (1) history and epistemology of experimentation; (2) history of epistemic objects, spaces of knowledge, and the changes in the mental equipment of scientists; (3) concept formation and the uses of theory.

• EvoDevo at the Konrad Lorenz Institute, Gerd B. Müller, U of Vienna, Chairman, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Austria

The KLI promotes the formulation and discussion of new theoretical concepts, primarily in the ar- eas of evolutionary developmental biology and evolutionary cognitive science. Research in these areas is supported by fellowships for graduate students, post-docs, and visiting scientists. In addi- tion, the KLI organizes lecture series at the University of Vienna and hosts roundtable discussions and workshops at the Lorenz mansion. In my introduction I will focus on the EvoDevo agenda that is central to our research activities.

• Where Do We Go Now? Themes in the ISH03 Program, Rob Skipper, ISHPSSB 2003 Program Chair, U of Cincinnati, USA

The 2003 ISHPSSB program is, no doubt, one of the largest in ISHPSSB history. I will reveal what I take to be some of the themes of the program, highlighting special sessions. Is where the 2003 ISHPSSB program is, where history, philosophy, and social studies of biology is going?

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM SESSION I, LR1

Interpreting Evolutionary Theory

Organizer and Chair, Thomas Kane _______________________________________________________________________________

• Adaptation and Natural Selection in Caves, Thomas Kane, U of Cincinnati, USA

Natural selection and genetic drift represent two competing hypotheses for the explanation of ge- netic change in populations. The evolution of cave dwelling organisms provides an interesting em- pirical case for distinguishing between these two hypotheses. Some features of these organisms (e.g., hypertrophy of extra-optic sensory structures) appear to be 'obviously adaptive'. Conversely, population sizes of cave dwelling organisms are often quite small, suggesting that genetic drift may play a significant role in their evolution. Further, regressive morphological features (e.g., re- duction of eyes; loss of pigmentation) that are widespread among cave dwelling forms are 'less ob- viously adaptive' and have often been explained in terms of genetic drift. Using multiple ap- proaches including fitness and heritability measures, as well as population genetic and phylo- genetic analysis, we find a significant role for selection in the evolution of both the hypertrophied and regressed features of a cave dwelling amphipod crustacean. The study, in part, addresses Ro- bert BRANDON's "components of complete adaptation explanations."

• Patterns of Drift, Robert C. Richardson, U of Cincinnati, USA

Natural selection and drift can explain the dynamics of populations, how gene frequencies, or genotype frequencies, or gene frequencies change with time. Given an initial distribution of genes, or genotypes, or phenotypes, with realistic parameter values for the population, we are able to pro- ject a probability distribution of the relevant frequencies over time. In the absence of selection, models for drift project specific patterns of change. These can be readily illustrated using the clas- sic work on blood types by CAVALLI-SFORZA, in which the theoretically predicted patterns are ex- hibited in groups of human populations. These are, in the first instance, properties of ensembles of populations. In looking at specific populations, the problem needs to be understood in terms of how likely an observed change would be under drift, and this is a fundamentally probabilistic question. In both cases, the explanations are demonstrably autonomous, in the sense described by HACKING in The Emergence of Probability.

• Experimental Models and Interpreting Evolutionary Theory, Rob Skipper, U of Cincinnati, USA

Recently there has been a flurry of philosophical work on the interpretation of evolutionary theory. There are, so it would seem, two alternatives: a force interpretation and a statistical interpretation. Conclusions about the conceptual distinction between random genetic drift and natural selection have been articulated via implications of these interpretations. What the apparent alternative inter- pretations of evolutionary lack is any direct reference to the role of experimental models in making the distinction between drift and selection. In this paper, I argue for an interpretation of evolution- ary theory that places much importance on the role of experimental models in interpreting evo- lutionary theory with respect to drift and selection. The paper relies on the work presented by KANE and RICHARDSON in the same session.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR4 SESSION II

Biologists in Policy-Making

Organizer: Heather Douglas, Chair: Heather Quinley, Cinergy, USA _______________________________________________________________________________

• How Can Biologists Contribute to Public Policy? Carl Cranor, U of California, Riverside, USA

This presentation, based upon both research and working with a variety of biologists, will explore several different ways in which biologists (broadly construing this term) could contribute to policy making. Most of the examples discussed will go beyond some conventional ideas about doing the science in some 'objective', value-free way. Biologists could frame research in accordance with a particular normative agenda, as some have, to ensure as far as the research can determine, that human health and the environment are protected from adverse effects. More broadly, they could set a research agenda to try to anticipate potential problems before they became serious threats to human health or the environment. There are also methodological approaches that would ensure more even-handed presentations of scientific evidence for policy purposes. Finally, there is a need also for biologists as 'honest biological brokers' in policy debates.

• Ecological Indicators: Science and Policy Intertwined in the Classification and Evaluation of Nature, Esther Turnhout, Matthijs Hisschemöller and Herman Eijsackers, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands

Ecological indicators are instruments to assess the ecological quality of nature. They use a selec- tion of characteristics that are considered relevant and are assumed to represent the ecological quality of nature. Both science and policy are involved in the development and use of ecological indicators. Ecological indicators are used in nature conservation policy because it is assumed that they objectify and operationalize ecological quality. Because of the normative and value-laden as- pects associated with nature and the personal preferences and subjective choices involved in the assessment of ecological quality, ecological indicators are often controversial. This paper will con- ceptualize ecological indicators as classification systems and boundary objects. It will furthermore use the concept of boundary work to describe processes going on between scientific and policy ac- tors involved in the development and use of ecological indicators. Empirical case studies on the role of ecological indicators in Dutch nature conservation policy that were undertaken as part of my PhD research, will be used to identify key factors that influence the development, use and/or non-use and efficacy of ecological indicators. This paper will show that flexibility and ambiguity, as opposed to rigidity, are important characteristics of effective ecological indicators. However, these characteristics are outcomes of social processes and cannot be used as general rules for the design of effective ecological indicators. This paper will show that context related factors such as views of nature and organizational context/culture, are important in understanding what will be taken to be flexible or rigid.

• Electromagnetic Field Effects and the Governance of Risk: The Precautionary Principle and the Interaction of Regulatory and Biological Models in the Context of Policy-Making, Justus Lentsch, Institute for Science and Technology Studies, Bielefeld U, Germany

How are biological models used in the context of policy-making? What is the relation between scientific risk analysis, scientific advice and policy making? Where does science end and policy- making begin? Scientific advice nowadays plays a crucial role for policy-making. But there is no clear demarcation between risk assessment as the realm of science and risk management as that of politics any more (cf. DOUGLAS 1998). In the course of this development, the idea of scientific models as an objective resource for policy analysis is increasingly challenged. Instead one can ob- serve an interaction between scientific and regulatory models and, accordingly, the influence of different kinds of implicit value judgments in the development of 'risk-relevant science'. This has

been shown, e.g., by DOUGLAS (1998) in the case of dioxin science and policy making, and by MORGAN and DEN BUTTER (2000) in the case of economic modeling.

To bridge the gap between scientific risk analysis and policy making it is widely suggested to adopt the 'precautionary principle' as a regulatory principle. It is a principle of how to act and how to direct further research in the face of scientific uncertainty (cf. EU Commission 2000). In this paper I will examine the case of electromagnetic field (EMF) effects by mobile phones on humans in Europe and especially in the UK. Relying on the results of the WHO report Establishing a Dialogue on Risk from Electromagnetic Fields (2002) I will mainly discuss the reports of two Bri- tish advisory committees, that of the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones (IEGMP), the Stewart Report (2000), and of the Advisory Group on Non-Ionising Radiation (AGNIR) on ELF Electromagnetic Fields and the Risk of Cancer (2001). I will take a closer look at how the pre- cautionary principle is supposed to deal with scientific uncertainties regarding the potential EMF health effects on humans. Drawing on recent accounts of models as autonomous "mediators" be- tween theory and reality (cf. MORRISON and MORGAN 1999). I will explore the interaction of re- gulatory and biological models with respect to EMF health effects in the context of policy making and policy recommendations in the EMF case. Moreover, I will make explicit the different episte- mic and non-epistemic value judgments implicitly involved. Finally, I will argue that in this con- text models become a kind of autonomous hybrid epistemic objects which are used to bridge be- tween the normative and the positive domains of policy related science.

• Biology and Disease Causation, Douglas L. Weed, National Cancer Institute, USA

The role of biology in public health practice is examined in this paper. Effective primary disease prevention in public health relies upon valid and reliable claims of causation. Examples include smoking as a cause of lung cancer, human papilloma virus as a cause of cervical cancer, and di- ethylstilbestrol as a cause of vaginal cancer. Causality is inferred from available scientific evi- dence, typically published studies from biology and epidemiology. In the past fifty years, biologi- cal evidence—especially as it relates to the concept of biological plausibility—has played an in- creasingly important role in the practice of causal inference. In this paper, definitions and rules of inference associated with biologic plausibility are described. A research program for improving the practice of causal inference is proposed with special attention paid to the role of objectivity and values.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR7 SESSION III

Biological Information

Contributed Papers, Chair: Ulrich Krohs _______________________________________________________________________________

• Information Theory and Immunology, Andrea Grignolio, U of Rome, Italy

My research project aims to analyze how, after 1948 and until the 1960s, information theory (Cy- bernetics and Mathematical Theory of Communication), and in general the information metaphor, were used within the theoretical debate on the nature of the antibody formation mechanisms of ac- quired immunity, and whether or not information theory carried out an heuristic role in the transi- tion from instructive to selective models of antibodies formation. Another problem is to attempt to reconstruct, within the immunology and molecular biology history, the reasons which permitted the success of the un-semantic information instead of many other theories available which inte- grated the syntactic and meaning dimensions.

• Semiotic Models, the Design of Molecular Structures, and the Function of DNA, Ulrich Krohs, U of Hamburg, Germany

Semiotic models in molecular genetics fit nicely to the underlying mechanism. Presupposing not only metaphorical content but adequacy, they either have to be fully reducible to physicalistic descriptions, or they generate a local ontology. If reduction, as I agree, fails as a matter of prin- ciple, the use of semiotic ontology is in need of further justification with respect to its adequacy to the underlying mechanism. I will present a proposal for such a justification. I localize the irre- ducible content of semiotic talk in the functional aspect: The function of DNA is to store in- formation, the function of RNA-polymerase is to transcribe it into RNA, the function of ribosomes is to translate it into protein. Therefore, I have to investigate the role, which the notion of biologi- cal function plays in linking the physicalistic and the semiotic sphere. But what kind of biological function is it to store a sign? Compare it to the (a minor) function of the spleen to store blood. Storing information and storing blood seem to be different kinds of function, so it looks as if a new notion of function was required. The problem is not that serious. I propose that we get things right if we regard not storage, but information itself as the functional term. Being information is the pri- mary function. (Storage we can get additionally for nothing.) To account for this, the etiological notion of biological function will do the job. (Instrumentalist notions would not suffice!) The etiological notion is linked to the notion of design. I will give an explication of design that over- comes the problems with this very notion. The notions of design and function bridge physicalistic and semiotic descriptions in the following way: DNA is designed by evolutionary processes to have a certain primary structure. 'Being naturally designed to...' implies by definition 'having the biological function to...', i.e., DNA has the biological function to have a certain structure. 'To have a certain structure' means in terms of semiotics: 'to be (or: to store) information'. The result of this translation is: The evolutionary acquired function of DNA is to be (to store) information. In this way, semiotic models are related via function ascriptions to molecular structures. (I will consider molecular processes as well.) The adequacy of semiotic models is strictly guaranteed by the molecular mechanisms as viewed in evolutionary perspective. This justifies the use of semiotic models to describe genetic mechanisms.

• Information Metaphors and the Meaning of 'Gene', Richard C. Francis, Independent Scholar, USA

The gene-centric view of both development and evolution has been greatly abetted by the trans- formation of the biochemical DNA into a semantic or meaning-bearing teleological entity. In large part this transformation can be traced to the infiltration of folk information metaphors into biology, as a result of which the material (physicochemical) properties of genes have been increasingly de- emphasized. The result is a fundamental ambiguity as to what the term 'gene' refers to. I will argue that we should reserve the term 'gene' for the relevant material bits of DNA. The immaterial bits of information that currently also go by that name require a different label in order to avoid con- fusion. I propose the term 'genie'. As the term implies, genies are problematically antinaturalistic, indeed, 'spooky' entities. That they currently pass for legitimate theoretical constructs is a tribute to the power of information metaphors in this information age. I will discuss two distinct types of genies: (1) the Aristotelian genies that figure prominently in gene-centric explanations of develop- ment; and (2) the Platonic genies that figure prominently in gene-centric explanations of evolution.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR2 SESSION IV

Reconfiguring Knowledge: Intersections Between Physiology and Philosophy

in the Last Quarter of the 19th Century

Organizer and Chair: Francesca Bordogna _______________________________________________________________________________

• Physiological Reconfigurations of Mind and Knowledge: Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Mach on the Unity of Knowledge, Edward Jurkowitz, U of Illinois, Chicago, USA

Focusing on Ernst MACH, and making comparisons to HELMHOLTZ, this paper examines the use that these leading scientists-epistemologists made of their physiological studies. Analyzing their positions regarding the central questions of objectivity and theoretical reduction, I show that they turned their physiological studies to different ends. While HELMHOLTZ interpreted aspects of the physiology of vision (corresponding points, etc) in order to create a central common store of agreed upon knowledge and conceptual unity, MACH presented a critical counterpoint. MACH turned the imperfection of knowledge grounded in human sensory apparatus to justify and make inevitable a diversity of theoretical viewpoints. While both challenged a range of traditional philosophical notions, they differed in their positions on reduction and proper scientific method- ology. I suggest that HELMHOLTZ's and MACH's different positions, including those on the unity of knowledge, derived in part from their locations in the unifying German Reich and the disinte- grating Austro-Hungarian Empire, and to their diverging uses of the cultural resources of German liberalism.

• Psychology Between Philosophy and Physiology: Demarcation and Discipline Formation in Late 19th Century France, Daniela Barberis, U of Chicago, USA

The last quarter of the 19th century in France witnessed the emergence of a new psychology, which aimed to be scientific and called itself 'physiological psychology'. It aggressively sought to break the dominance of philosophy over its subject matter and, in order to distance itself from philoso- phical psychology, drew near to the life sciences and especially to physiology. The foremost spo- kesman of this new psychology in France, Théodule RIBOT, was also the founder of its first profes- sional philosophy journal, the Revue philosophique. As this simple fact indicates, the demarcation of psychology from philosophy was a complex process, a process in which physiology, given its high scientific status at that time, played an important role—as both ally and purveyor of argu- ments to undermine philosophical conceptions. My paper will examine the process of boundary formation leading to the establishment of psychology as an independent academic discipline in France.

• The Disputed Boundaries: William James, Philosophy, and the Naturalistic 'Science of Man', Francesca Bordogna, Northwestern U, USA

The second half of the 19th century witnessed the dissolution of the traditional all-encompassing philosophical inquiry into human nature and the emergence of increasingly specialized disciplines of the human subject. Physiology and the life sciences contributed to that process, by engendering a multi-sided, aggressively expanding naturalistic 'science of man'. Naturalists challenged the social and political primacy of the philosophical study of human nature, and questioned the edu- cational value of the philosophical training of the mind. This paper locates William JAMES at the intersection of disciplinary and pedagogical debates that saw the supporters of the naturalistic and evolutionary science of man pitted against the defenders of the traditional philosophical study of the human subject. Focusing on the early years of JAMES's career, when JAMES was an instructor of physiology at Harvard College, I reconstruct JAMES's interventions in the disputed boundary territory separating 'introspective philosophy' from brain physiology. The paper describes JAMES's endeavors to project an image of himself as a 'man of the two disciplines', and his efforts foster a collaborative form of inquiry that would engage both philosophers and naturalists. I contend that

JAMES's early negotiations of disciplinary and pedagogical boundaries brought him to a novel understanding of philosophy as a cooperative enterprise in which general laws could be derived inductively from the results obtained in a wide range of sciences, including, especially, physics, physiology, and biology.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR 8 SESSION V

Biology and Gender

Organizer and Chair: Smilla Ebeling _______________________________________________________________________________

• The Gendered Brain, Sigrid Schmitz, U of Freiburg, Germany

There is an outstanding focus in recent research on gender differences in brain structure and func- tion with implications for human behavior and cognition. These implications are mostly drawn against a biological-neuroendocrinological background, emphasizing the 'nature-theory' of sex differences. Alternatively, recent concepts of the plasticity of brain development and neural net- work differentiation depending on external input and individual experiences reveal a contrasting view on the nature-nurture-debate. The latter approach points out gender constructions in the brain formed by a specific psychosocial and cultural background. Considering gender studies in modern brain research with respect to methodical evaluation and theoretical reflection, I will point out the embodiment concept of individual and cultural experience in the brain.

• Gendered Genes? Bärbel Mauss, Humboldt U, Berlin, Germany

Starting from the tremendous importance of biomedicine for our conception of human life, I would like to point out in my talk that there is a cultural contextuality within scientific recognition. I will do so by re-reading scientific texts out of a current field of research—the field of 'genomic im- printing'—with regard to their descriptions of fundamental categories in the modern age, especial- ly the category 'gender'. The example of the phenomenon 'genomic imprinting' shall illustrate how cultural norms are inscribed both in the research practice and in the biomedical material. One of the remarkable features of genomic imprinting is that the effect of a gene depends on its respective parental origin, i.e., the same gene causes different phenotypical marks depending on its parental origin. Some genes can be read preferentially, i.e., they wear a sex-specific mark in the form of biochemical markers. Those signalize a certain DNA-segment that is not legible from one certain strand. In genomic imprinting, as I would like to set out, the quotation of the norm of the sexes shifts to the molecular level. In the field of genomic imprinting I will demonstrate that the bio- medical complex has a normalizing effect, in particular with regard to the two sexes and hetero- sexuality.

• Biological Theories about Sex and Reproduction as Mirror of Ideas of Human Sex and Gender Issues, Smilla Ebeling, U of Oldenburg, Switzerland

In my paper I will point out interconnections of the understanding of sex and gender systems in society and biology. Biological descriptions of sex and reproduction of animals and plants mirror the ideas of human sex and reproduction, and, implemented in biological theories, these ideas of human sex and reproduction serve as explanations for human sex, gender, and sexualities. I will give historical and recent examples of critical analyses of biological descriptions of animals and plants that show naturalizations and fortifications of human sex and gender ideas. One important question of my talk concerns the application of concepts that are connotated by human values like marriage, parthenogenesis, homosexuality, and rape, for example. Should we be cautious not to apply these concepts in biological descriptions of animals and plants or do concepts like sexuality and transvestites, for instance, help to point out that biological theories carry sex and gender in- scriptions?

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR6 SESSION VI

Zoos in Central Europe

Organizer and Chair: Mitchell Ash _______________________________________________________________________________

• A Venue of Social Pleasures: The Establishment of the Zoological Garden of Frankfurt am Main, Ayako Sakurai, Cambridge U, UK

The purpose of this paper is to point out two cultural moments instrumental in the success of the zoos as an important social venue in the German-speaking countries in the latter half of the 19th century. Taking the establishment of the Zoological Garden of Frankfurt am Main (founded in 1858) as an example, I will suggest that the interaction between the practice of spazieren—leisure walk—and contemporary print culture helped the new institution to open up a new niche in the ur- ban cultural market. Firstly, I will demonstrate that the experience of seeing animals in the zoo derived much of its attractions from preceding acquisition of knowledge about nature from the flourishing contemporary print culture—the spectators' pleasure was sustained by the sense of real- ity generated from their previous encounters in illustrated journals and popular books. Secondly, I will elucidate how the practice of spazieren enabled the integration of the appreciation of animals into the polite culture of the middle-class Bürgertum. The Zoological Garden in Frankfurt was primarily designed as a pleasure garden where middle-class people would visit to take a walk with one's family or acquaintance. A stroll in such a place meant much more than physical exercise—it encompassed the regular socialising among the promenaders enfolded in the form of polite conver- sation. An important component of such conversation was the appreciation of the wonder and beauty of nature, which the zoological garden and its collection of animals visualised and repre- sented in an epitomised and tangible way. The common stock of knowledge of natural history, cre- ated through the printed press, rendered these animals into amusing conversation pieces that en- hanced the social pleasures of the strollers.

• The Nature of the City: Zoos as Spaces of Urban Culture, Christina Wessely, U of Vienna, Austria

Zoos are traditionally tightly connected with urban culture, while at the same time they always symbolize the 'other', the exclusive right in the middle of the modern metropolis. The entire con- cept of the zoo is about negotiations about nature and culture and their struggle for meanings with- in its terrain. The paper tries to identify the diverse relations and references that exist between the 19th century zoo and the city. It shows how signs of the natural are inscripted in urban texts, and vice versa, meanings of the urban are embedded in the virtual wildness of the zoo. Taking the Ber- lin Zoo, founded in 1844, as an example, three main lines of reference between the rapidly grow- ing metropolis and its 'Zoologischer Garten' are to be shown: The zoo produces specific choreo- graphies of motion through establishing a wide range of explicit and implicit instructions which coordinate people ́s behaviour and motion in its terrain. The so constructed semantics of the visual are very similar to techniques of urban perception the visitors know well from their urban environ- ments. At the same time, the dominant meanings of the zoo hidden in those instructions are con- fronted with alternative ways of acting that show that the visitors bring their own meanings to the zoo, taken from their urban cultural background. In a second step it is to be shown how material formations which give the zoo its specific design, e.g., architectural forms which are en vogue in the city and determine techniques of perception there, are rebuilt and cited in the zoo. Beside those architectural connections, other moments which characterize the rapidly growing metropolis and make its visual appearance as well as its 'place image' can be found in the zoo. Themes of the city's own self-description, some of its main cultural tropes are quoted in the zoo. Thus, signs and meanings of the 'outside' urban space are imported and mixed with connotations of the natural. Yet the zoo is not a copy or an imitation of the city, but it is one of its central strategies to inscribe utopia on the terrain of the familiar and vice versa. The zoo is a version of a town, it is based on a particular urbanism and it accumulates trends of the city that are everywhere visible but nowhere

so acutely elaborated. But it's not just the city influencing the zoo and stretching out into the territory of the wild: Images of the 'modern' Berlin are closely linked with narrations of the natural which means that 'nature' does no longer—if it ever was so—occur only in strictly concluded areas like zoos or gardens but suddenly seems to pop up anywhere in the city, also at places where it is not supposed to do so. What finally is to be shown is that the zoo is, for the very reason that it has those diverse relations with the city, not the other. What it actually does, not least because of its claim to reflect social processes through its inhabitants, the animals, is that it tells us many things about urban space, about its architectural, social, and political concepts and about fears, hopes, and desires of its visitors concerning all the specific demands which different versions of the urban place upon them.

• Between Education and Entertainment: The Public Schönbrunn Menagerie in the 19th and Early 20th Century, Oliver Hochadel, U of Vienna, Austria

Without an audience a zoo does not make much sense. Yet while interest in the history of the zoo has increased steadily in the past decades the spectators have received relatively little attention. A very interesting intersection of science and the public is still to be researched. What did the spectators actually see when they looked into the cages? Respectively: who was trying to define what the spectators should see? What were the expectations of spectators and 'zoo management' and how did they change over time? The case of the Schönbrunn Menagerie offers interesting ans- wers to these questions. In the course of the 19th century the number of visitors increased steadily. Unlike most other zoos there were hardly any social and no financial restrictions in Vienna. The imperial institution was non-profit oriented; until 1922 no entrance fee was charged. Nevertheless an increasing need to cater for the public's taste for entertainment was felt. This sometimes col- lided with the intentions of popularizers of science and 'educators of the people' trying to teach the spectators about the animal world and to draw moral lessons from it. The source material also al- lows to distinguish different kinds of audiences. Children, school classes, university students, art- ists, but also 'educated' and 'uneducated' spectators were addressed and dealt with in different ways. Dealing with the public was also linked with the attempt to discipline its behavior—by no means always successfully. "Do not feed the animals" signs were usually ignored.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR9 SESSION VII

Making Sense of Interlevel Causation

Organizer and Chair: Carl F. Craver _______________________________________________________________________________

• Explaining (Away) Interlevel Causes I: A Field Guide to Levels, Carl Craver, Washington U of St. Louis, USA

In many areas of science, it is acceptable or fashionable to posit the existence of interlevel causes. Yet the notion of interlevel causation cannot be clearly articulated or justified without careful at- tention to the notion of a level. On some understandings of levels (e.g., levels size or theory), there is arguably no reason for skepticism about interlevel causal claims. On other notions of level (notably those involving constituency relations) interlevel causal claims look considerably more suspect. I offer a field guide to different senses of 'level' and their implications for thinking about interlevel causation. I suggest further that the central sense of levels in contemporary biology is one that makes it quite difficult to speak intelligibly of interlevel causation—if, that is, one desires a univocal view of causation.

• Explaining (Away) Interlevel Causes II: Mechanistically Mediated Effects, Bill Bechtel, U of California, San Diego, USA

Several cases of putative top-down causation will be presented from the following domains of the life sciences—genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. In each case we will show that either there is a mechanism mediating the interlevel causal relationship or the interlevel causal re- lationship is illegitimate. Mechanistically mediated interlevel causes can in general be understood as a combination of an etiological causal claim and a constitutive claim.

• Top-Down Causation and Mechanistic Explanation, Gregory Mikkelson, McGill U, Canada

Two different lines of evidence indicate that top-down causation (the phenomenon of wholes af- fecting their parts) is far more prevalent in science than has been previously recognized. First, pro- minent examples of top-down causation exist, such as natural selection in evolutionary biology, and diversity-stability relations in ecology. Second, an intuitive explication of the 'mechanism' concept entails that any lower-level mechanism for a same-level causal relationship must involve both top-down and bottom-up causation. Therefore, the widespread practice of explaining same- level causal relationships in terms of lower-level mechanisms multiplies the number of top-down causal relationships known to science.

• Realization, Mechanism, and Cause, Thomas W. Polger, U of Cincinnati, USA

According to a commonly held doctrine (sometimes called 'realization physicalism'), properties, entities and events at so-called higher levels are realized by properties, entities and events at lower levels. According to the doctrine of mechanism recently defended by MACHAMER, DARDEN, CRA- VER, and their collaborators, there are at least sometimes causal interactions among entities and ac- tivities at different levels, i.e., those that are realizers and those that are realized. This paper begins to answer the question: What must the realization relation be in order for mechanism to be correct? Rather than defend a particular realization relation, I outline the constraints that any such relation must satisfy in order to support mechanism.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR10 SESSION VIII

Fifty Years of the Molecular Biology of Behavior

Organizer and Chair: C.U.M. Smith _______________________________________________________________________________

• DNA and the Origins of a Molecular Neuroscience, C.U.M. Smith, Aston U, UK

It is noteworthy that after the publication of the WATSON-CRICK paper fifty years ago a number of prominent members of the scientific community responsible for that breakthrough transferred their attention to what seemed to them the next (if not the last) great unsolved problem in biology: the brain. Prominent amongst these pioneers were Francis CRICK himself, Max DELBRÜCK, Gunther STENT, Gerald EDELMAN. Seymour BENZER, Sydney BRENNER and, of course, many of the contri- butors to the Neuroscience Study Programs edited by F. O. SCHMITT. It is interesting that many of these pioneers were originally physicists and had been influenced by the great schools of quantum physics of the early 20th century. This paper reviews this migration and asks how far it altered the mindset of neurophysiologists and affected the dominating metaphors of neuroscience. How far does the implicit reductionism of the molecular approach do what the pioneers hoped: elucidate the working of the brain?

• Neurodevelopmental Complexities in Worms and Flies: Strategies for Representation and Explanation, Kenneth F. Schaffner, George Washington U, USA

Until quite recently it was the scientific consensus that the completion of the Human Genome Pro- ject and other model organism genomic sequence projects would yield breakthroughs in the under- standing how genes influence both normal and pathological behavior. But over the past few years there has been a growing realization, amid many replication failures, that gene influences on be- haviors are vastly more complex than initially expected in the early research programs of BENZER on the fly and BRENNER on the worm. One hope is that microarrays may come to the rescue and provide a new tool to dissect complex gene-behaviour relations. In this talk I review several recent microarray studies from the laboratories of CHALFIE and of GREENSPAN and White involving C. elegans and Drosophila, perhaps the best organisms for initially approaching gene-behavior rela- tions in the context of organisms' neural systems. I cite both technical problems with neural micro- array studies, such as low gene expression ratios and neural cell heterogeneity, as well as more general conceptual problems with existing approaches to representation and explanation in the microarray area. A set of strategies for likely future studies in behaviour genetics, tied to micro- arrays and other methodologies, is also presented.

• Neurobiology and a Renaissance in Psychoanalysis? A. E. Manier, U of Notre Dame, USA

Throughout his career, Nobel Laureate Eric KANDEL has published solid experimental results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and bold theoretical speculation in the American Journal of Psychiatry. In 1998 in the latter journal, KANDEL heralded the possibility of a neurobiological 'renaissance' in psychoanalytic thought. I critically compare the details of this striking claim with recent philosophical discussions of the basic concepts of psychoanalysis.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR3 SESSION IX

History and Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contributed Papers, Chair, Jeff Schank, U of California, Davis, USA _______________________________________________________________________________

• The Commitments of Computational Neuroscience, David M. Kaplan, Duke University, USA

A particularly important distinction for, but not generally heeded by, (practitioners of) computa- tional neuroscience is that between computational and computable. Roughly, the former applies to what does the computing and the latter to whatever gets computed. An interesting and important question as computational neuroscience emerges as an important subfield within the neurosciences is whether there is any theoretical commitment to the stronger claim that the brain (or nervous system) is computational and not just effectively computable. It is well known that the positions and trajectories of planets comprising our solar system are effectively computable. However, the fact that the behavior of the solar system is governed by some computable function is not generally taken as evidence that the solar system is itself computational—a stronger claim on the nature of a system, to be sure. Similarly, it does not follow from the fact that the behavior of a neural system can be captured by a computational model or some computable function that it is computational. This paper argues that there are in fact mixed computational commitments within computational neuroscience—some work supports only a commitment to the nervous system being computable or capable of being modeled by some computable function, while other work betrays commitment to a much stronger claim that the nervous system is itself a computational system. This paper (1) indicates the relevance of the computational/computable distinction for computational neuro- science, (2) shows how the former side of the distinction makes some rather strong claims about the nature of the system under investigation while the latter side makes substantially weaker claims about the studied system, and (3) suggests reasons for caution on the part of those claiming that nervous systems are themselves computational phenomena.

• Rat Pups and Robots, Jeff Schank, U of California, Davis, USA

A new crosscutting research program is described, which combines different modeling approaches (statistical, cellular automata, system-dynamic, and robotic) to explain sensorimotor development in infant rats. We argue that no single type of model is adequate to explain the dynamics of sen- sorimotor development. Different types of models can address deficiencies in each other. For ex- ample, probabilistic cellular automata models are very good at probabilistically describing the dynamics of behavior, but neither explicitly incorporates physical parameters nor guides us to a single interpretation of resulting behavioral probabilities. System dynamic models allow us to ex- plicitly incorporate physical parameters and run fast simulations, but these models run into tracta- bility issues when there are groups of interacting individuals. This is where robotic models can prove invaluable. But, system dynamic and robotic models also run into problems when we at- tempt to fits rules for their behavior to actual data. Even with genetic algorithms, this can be a dif- ficult problem. Using genetic algorithms to fit probabilistic cellular automata to data is often an easier problem and the resulting cellular automata models provide a bridge to finding good system dynamic and robotic models. The idea of a taxis (orienting response) has had a long history in the study of behavior and is often viewed as a simple 'reflexive' explanation of behavior. For example, wall following and moving to corners by Norway rats in an enclosure is often explained as a thigmotactic response to walls and corners. We found that behaviors often labeled as taxes (e.g., thigmotaxis, geotaxis) require explanations involving the whole organism situated in a structured environment. These explanations change with development. For example, when a rat pup, 7 to 10 days of age is placed in a temperature controlled rectangular arena, it will typically end up with its head oriented towards a corner. Is this a thigmotactic response to corners? Or, is it due to a prefer- ence or motivation to seek safety? Our simulation and robotic studies suggest that pups are neither orienting to corners nor exhibiting a preference or motivation to seek corners for safety. Instead, pups get 'stuck' in corners because of their sensorimotor reactions to walls and corners. Thus, at these ages, thigmotactic behavior is best explained by sensorimotor rules and the structure of the environment (the information if affords). Moreover, when we look at the dynamics of group behavior, weak responses to stimuli—e.g., pup movement on the surface of an arena with a 1 de- gree incline—by an individual are greatly amplified in the context of a group. These amplified group responses can be explained with the help of computer simulation and robotic interactions. Future work will focus on behavior given the same label at different developmental stages (e.g., thigmotactic behaviors) and how these behaviors require different situated explanations as new sensory systems come online (i.e., visual and auditory systems) as well as learning, memory, and motivation.

This research is supported by a grant from NSF to the author.

• Dynamics in Laterality Research, Ruth A. Byrne, KLI, Austria

BROCA found that in humans the ability to speak is located in the left frontal lobe of the brain. To explain this he claimed that asymmetry is not inborn but is imposed by education and civilization upon the human mind. In the second half of the 19th century the left side of the brain was consider- ed to be the leading one while the right side was viewed as 'animalistic'. For a long time thereafter brain lateralization was thought to be unique to humans, associated with language and intellect.

Further studies on brain asymmetries of psychiatric patients as well as the beginning of WWI brought this branch of research to a dead end. In the interbellum research on mainly structural and behavioral asymmetries of invertebrates peaked briefly. This was probably distant enough from the topic of human cerebral asymmetries not to scratch on human uniqueness. The attitude towards lateral asymmetries changed dramatically when science became focused on observations of split- brain patients in the late 1960s. The research field had not only moved from Europe to the USA but was also confronted with a completely different way of thinking—by then brain asymmetry was viewed as 'dual lateralized functioning'. In the next decades the amount of publications on lateral asymmetries increased dramatically and was now also extended to nonhuman vertebrates. Work on rodents and birds in particular provided valuable insights into functional and behavioral

brain lateralization. Interestingly, research on nonhuman primates increased later, starting around 1985. Although evidence for lateralization of other vertebrates already existed, scientists explained cerebral asymmetries of nonhuman primates in terms of their close relatedness to humans. This was influenced by the idea that primate lateralization constituted a 'prelinguistic stage' of the human trait, driven by chimpanzee sign language studies. At the turn of the 21st century the idea that lateral asymmetries are a homologous trait in all vertebrates and thus not restricted to humans was finally accepted. Now, after another break of 70 years, new evidence is being found for behav- ioral asymmetry in an invertebrate, the octopus. How long will it take this time until science ac- knowledges that lateralization is not unique to vertebrates, but might be a common principle that evolves when neuronal systems must cope with complex sensory input?

• On the Uses of Strychnine: J.G. Dusser de Barenne and Cerebral Localization, 1916-1940, Tara Abraham, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

In 1938, the Nobel Prize winning neurophysiologist Edgar D. ADRIAN observed that up until the present, electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex had been useful for revealing the 'receiving and executive' apparatus of the cortex but had showed little of the processes that intervene. He noted that a group working with the Dutch physiologist J.G. DUSSER DE BARENNE (1885-1940), at Yale's Laboratory of Neurophysiology, had been making headway in the analysis of these electrical records, through the local application of strychnine to the surface of cerebral cortex. First developed by DUSSER DE BARENNE in 1916, the strychnine method, in contrast to electrical stimulation, was seen to reveal clues about the organization of activity within the cortex. This paper will first focus on the work of DUSSER DE BARENNE and his colleagues, concentrating on his strychnine method and how it differed from other more traditional approaches to the problem of cerebral localization. Secondly, the paper will examine the conceptual dimensions of DUSSER DE BARENNE's work. Influenced by the work of neurophysiologist Charles S. SHERRINGTON, DUSSER DE BARENNE favoured the concept of 'functional organization' over 'localization' when speaking of the functional activity of the cortex. Finally, this paper will situate DUSSER DE BARENNE's method and his ideas in the context of both clinical and laboratory studies of cerebral localization in Inter- war America.

Thursday, 11-12:30 PM, LR5 SESSION X

Genetics in History

Contributed Papers, Chair: Ana Barahona _______________________________________________________________________________

• Mendel Finds a Home: Disciplinary Momentum in the American Reception of Mendel, 1900-1910, Barbara Kimmelman, Philadelphia U, USA

When MENDEL came to America, his earliest and most enthusiastic welcome was from academic agricultural breeders, employed at state agricultural experiment stations and agricultural colleges. To discover why, I borrow two concepts imported from the history of technology, technology transfer and technological momentum, and develop the notion of disciplinary momentum—the ten- dency of practitioners trained within a particular discipline to actively and creatively continue the- oretical work and apply techniques in the direction for which their disciplinary training prepared them. Comparing and contrasting zoological evolutionists, cytologists, botanists, and breeders, I show that the technological momentum of the first three groups carried them powerfully in direc- tions for which MENDEL's work was tangential at best. But agricultural breeders were already familiar with MENDEL's intellectual concerns as well as his specific experimental techniques. Their disciplinary momentum swept MENDEL up and carried him with them, providing MENDEL with an ample home in America and giving early American Mendelism its agricultural character, both in- tellectually and institutionally.

• The Role Played by Theodosius Dobzhansky in the Emergence and Institutionalization of Genetics in Mexico, Ana Barahona and Francisco Ayala, UNAM, Mexico

The first time DOBZHANSKY went to Mexico was in 1935. He participated in a trip across the states of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and the countries Mexico and Guatemala, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. He returned in 1936 and 1938 with the financial support of the Carne- gie Institution. The purpose of the trips was to collect several samples of Drosophila azteca. During this time, the study of giant chromosomes in the salivary glands of fly larvae allowed cyto- genetic and phylogenetic studies on the diversification and speciation mechanisms of these organ- isms. This work was done with Demetrio SOKOLOFF (1891-1973), who worked at the Escuela Na- cional de Ciencias Biológicas (ENCB) at the time. DOBZHANSKY went back to Mexico in 1974, where he started the project "Population Genetics of Mexican Drosophila" initiated with the finan- cial support of the National Science Foundation and the CONACyT. Professors Louis LEVINE and Jeffrey POWELL, both former students of DOBZHANSKY, and professors Rodolfo FÉLIX, Olga OL- VERA, Judith GUZMÁN, Victor SALCEDA, and Ma. Esther DE LA ROSA were all incorporated in the project. Several visits to the states of Michoacán, Hidalgo, Mexico, and Morelos were organized in order to collect samples. From the analysis of gonadal chromosomes and morphological observa- tion of specimens collected in July 1974 in Cuernavaca, the description of Drosophila cuauhtemoci was published in 1976. When DOBZHANSKY died in 1975, professor Wyatt ANDER- SON became part of the project research team. Close to twenty articles derived from this project have been published in international journals, and several papers have been presented in special- ized meetings.

• From Autarky to Eugenics: The Rex Rabbit as a Mirror of the Healthy Nation: The Emergence of Pathologic Objects and the Beginnings of Comparative Medical Genetics in Germany Around 1930, Alexander von Schwerin

German genetics in the 1930s witnessed somewhat of a boom in comparative genetics. Geneticists intended to construct animal (mainly mammalian) experimental systems especially as model sys- tems for human hereditary diseases. German geneticists, and comparative medical geneticists in particular, were deeply concerned with eugenics as the prominent role of mutations in genetics from the late '20s on was inseparable of the alarmed care for the long-term health of the national gene pool. Thus, whereas the commitment to eugenics was not an outcome of Nazi ideology, it is not clear how comparative medical genetics in Germany was invented and how pathologic objects in genetics emerged. From this perspective, several beginnings of comparative medical genetics have been found to be possible.

Here I will concentrate on the research of the geneticist Hans NACHTSHEIM that led from the breeding of rabbits for national agricultural autarky to animal modelling for the purposes of human genetics and eugenic practice. This transformation started in 1929 and was only irreversible after NACHTSHEIM had joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. In this transformation the representational and scientific practice and the discourses of heredity and health worked together. Former historical perspectives on the breaks and continuities in NACHTSHEIM's work are being questioned by the inclusion of scientific practice.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM SESSION I, LR4

Experiments in Experimentalism in the Early 20th Century I

Organizer and Chair: Sander Gliboff _______________________________________________________________________________

• Paul Kammerer and the Vivarium, Sander Gliboff, Indiana U, USA

The turn-of-the-century call to experimentalism in the study of development, heredity, and evolu- tion, encouraged the growth of new kinds of institutions, from the seaside laboratories of Naples and Woods Hole to the Fly Room at Columbia. One of the most unconventional new laboratories was in Vienna, at the Institute for Experimental Biology, also known as the Vivarium, founded in 1902, by Hans PRZIBRAM. It was to be devoted strictly to whole-organism experimentation, with state-of-the-art equipment, but not to any particular subject area—physiology and genetics were expressly ruled out—and not to any particular model organism. Paul KAMMERER performed all of his ill-fated experiments at the Vivarium. He became the most visible and vocal proponent of the inheritance of acquired characteristics in the 1910s and '20s. However, his colleagues outside the Vivarium were always critical of his results, and he never seemed able to respond with improved experimental designs. As criticism mounted, a series of scandals steadily undermined his credi- bility, until he committed suicide in 1926, amid accusations of fraud, and sealed his posthumous reputation. KAMMERER's own indiscretions might have triggered the scandals, but they do not explain his entire rise and fall. Why did his results attract so much international attention from the start? Why was the attention so critical? And why was he unable to satisfy his critics with new experiments? Recent historical studies of other laboratories suggest ways in which to analyze PRZIBRAM's founding vision and the internal culture of the Vivarium, with the aim of tracing the laboratory's influence on KAMMERER's program and explaining some of its peculiarities and its reception outside the Vivarium. It will be argued that KAMMERER lived up to the Vivarium vision and piqued international interest by showcasing the art of the whole-organism experiment and the power of the laboratory's equipment. However, he was not served well by avoiding specialization on an appropriate model organism or by failing to develop expertise in genetics. The Vivarium vision was not fully shared by other laboratories, where KAMMERER's work was considered sub- standard.

• The Inheritance of Acquired Sexual Diversity: The Steinach-Kammerer Collaboration, Cheryl Logan, U of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA

The biology of sexuality was transformed after 1900 by a new type of cause—the hypothetical inner secretions that were later termed 'hormones'. PRZIBRAM's Vivarium became an international center for endocrine research when in 1912, Eugen STEINACH was hired to direct the laboratory's Division of Physiology. There STEINACH perfected same- and cross-sex transplants of male and female gonads to show that the development of sexuality in rats and guinea pigs was directed by chemicals that were part of the process of normal development. STEINACH's Vivarium colleague Paul KAMMERER was also interested in sexuality, and in 1920, the two collaborated on a project that combined STEINACH's physiology with KAMMERER's social interests. Their work was entitled 'Klima und Mannbarkeit' ('Climate and Masculinity'). It presented a series of experiments on the impact of high heat on the development of sexuality in albino rats. The research fused STEINACH's reproductive physiology with KAMMERER's emphasis on the inheritance of acquired characteris- tics, showing that high heat produced hypersexuality, which was then inherited by the descendants of the first generation. STEINACH and KAMMERER went beyond rats, however, as they applied their experiments to sexual diversity in human culture. They compared findings on their 'heat rats' with the anthropological literature on the sexuality of indigenous peoples in the tropics and the arctic to challenge anthropologists who stressed racial explanations of sexuality based in inner, pre-deterministic (keimplasmatischen) conditions. I will argue that the work served each man well.

It helped accommodate STEINACH's internalist perspective to the Vivarium's externalist culture, and it provided KAMMERER with a much needed physiological mechanism with which to argue against the prevailing degenerationist approach to human sexual diversity and instead to promote his program of constructive social improvement.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR8 SESSION II

History of 20th Century Biology

Contributed Papers. Chair: Nathaniel Comfort _______________________________________________________________________________

• Jim Watson's Eugenics, Nathaniel Comfort, The George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, USA

This year marks the 50th anniversary of James WATSON and Francis CRICK's double-helix model of DNA. WATSON, with his penchant for provocative and often sexist public statements, has long been a favorite whipping-boy for socially conscious historians of biology. Yet with rare exceptions he has been treated more as a caricature than as a serious historical actor. Once we move beyond what is offensive in WATSON, is there anything genuinely troubling? Yes, there is—but it is in most of us. Analysis of WATSON's public writings reveals strong parallels, common themes, and trends when compared with earlier eugenicists such as Francis GALTON and Charles DAVENPORT. A concrete look at the rhetoric of modern human genetics enables us to move beyond hand-wringing warnings about 'new' or 'back-door' eugenics. It makes the very definition of eugenics more complex and more dangerous. WATSON makes a persuasive case that a world of eugenic personal choice is inevitable. Molecular medical eugenics may be upon us, but if so, it will be based on rampant individualism rather than state control. Running through the history of eugenics, from GALTON to WATSON, is a theme of overweening confidence in contemporary science: the belief that now, at long last, we understand enough about human heredity to take it into our own hands.

• Wright's Shifting Balances, Jonathan Hodge, U of Leeds, UK

WRIGHT's shifting balance theory of evolutionary change did have origins in his analyses of animal breeding strategies. But, it also had other origins in traditions of thought concerned, quite generally, with tendencies to homogeneity in nature versus tendencies to heterogeneity, and with equilibria versus progressive change. Before he called it a theory of shifting balance, he identified it as a theory of moving equilibrium. This concept of moving equilibrium had already had an in- fluential and instructive history in such authors as A. J. LOTKA and Herbert SPENCER. When WRIGHT's theory is understood as he understood it—as a theory of moving equilibrium in the forces making for homogeneity and heterogeneity—one can see that his original rationale for small, local subpopulations was that they ensured a role for inbreeding, rather than ensuring a role for drift. What is more, by giving inbreeding a decisive role, WRIGHT could satisfy what he took to be the demands for making any process of change intelligible, by understanding both its 'conser- vative' and its innovative ('radical') tendencies.

• Emile Zuckerkandl: His Early Life and the Molecular Clock Hypothesis, Tomoko Steen, Library of Congress, USA

In 1964, Emile ZUCKERKANDL discovered a new pattern of evolution at the molecular level, and named it 'molecular clock'. His discovery is, in short, the mutants accumulate in the same rate when a same macromolecule is compared among various species. Thus, using this hypothesis, one can identify the divergence time by simply comparing the differences in the number of mutations accumulated in ach species. Since the discovery of DNA structure in 1953, eyes of biological sci- entists have shifted down to the molecular level. The molecular clock hypothesis was presented in this perfect setting. ZUCKERKANDL was a postdoctoral fellow under Linus PAULING back then, but

this discovery eventually made him a distinguished scientist in California. However, his early life was not so easy. He was born in Vienna (Austria) in a wealthy Jewish family; however, the raise of Nazi Germany brought great difficulties to their lives. My talk will be on his early life and dis- covery of the molecular clock.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR1 SESSION III

A Cultural History of Heredity I

Organizers: Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger _______________________________________________________________________________

• Elements of Hybridism, 1759-1875,
Staffan Müller-Wille, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

In my paper I will try to analyse, how the complex and inherently contradictory notion of 'constant varieties' was fleshed out in the experimental tradition that followed upon LINNAEUS's famous hybridisation experiment of 1759 and led up to chapter XV of DARWIN's Variation under Domesti- cation (1875). The researchers involved in this tradition had very different agendas: for KÖLREU- TER species 'transmutation' was at stake, HERBERT's interests were taxonomic, GÄRTNER tried to find proofs for plant sexuality, WICHURA focussed on the evolutionary significance of hybridisa- tion, and NAUDIN, finally, gave priority to questions of heredity. Yet it is possible to identify a common pattern in this experimental tradition consisting in what might be called the 'atomisation' of species: varieties were combined and produced through these experiments in a way that shifted the level of analysis from species to differential characters as the 'elements' of the species. This shift was reflected in the proliferation of categories, nomenclatures and symbol systems that were used to describe the varieties of varietal behaviour—constant vs. variable, atavistic vs. progressive, etc.—within species. Heredity emerged as a central concept in this conceptual and symbolic space to account for patterns of variation that recurred independently of environmental conditions and yet were intraspecific.

• Heredity and Adaptation in Kant,
Peter McLaughlin, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

The consideration of heredity in the latter 18th century seems to have focused primarily on the transmission of defects, especially hereditary disease. Immanuel KANT, too, uses the concept 'Ver- erbung' in this context: he analyses the discussion of the transmission of defects as carried on in the three 'higher' university faculties (law, medicine, and theology) with their notions of 'Erb- schuld', 'Erbkrankheit', and 'Erbsünde' (hereditary debt, hereditary disease, and original sin). But he also deals with the concept of 'Vererbung' in biology, where it was used in an area with de- cidedly positive connotations: adaptation. My presentation will deal with the relation of heredity to adaptation in the biological writings of KANT. Individual adaptations—as opposed to the appro- priateness of the species form for its place in nature—did not constitute a central theme in 18th- century biological thought. And even for LAMARCK they are of only secondary interest. KANT's position may be an important point of departure for the study of adaptive heredity and for the quite different relation of 19th-century thought to the problem of adaptation.

• Contagion and Heredity as Causes of Diseases in Early 19th-Century France, Laure Cartron, U of Paris I - Sorbonne, France

To study the concepts of heredity and the confusion of theories explaining this 'obscure question' requires nothing less than pinpointing why such discourse was opportune at the time and finding links between its discursive quality and the problems posed by the social environment. In this communication, I shall try to make clear in which social or political context these medical perspec- tives—heredity and contagion—had been favoured. With a little oversimplification one may say

that up until around 1780, there existed two fundamentally contradictory views of the causes of disease: contagion and heredity. The notion of contagion was very ancient. As early as the 16th century, Girolamo FRACASTORO (1478-1543), a Verona physician and astrologer, had developed the idea of 'contagium vivum'. Later on, Jean-Baptiste BIANCHI in 1741 and Marcus Antoniuz PLENCIZ in 1762 contended that diseases like plague, leprosy, phthisis, syphilis, and smallpox had to do with "diversi generis insecta" entering the organism and growing in number.

At the end of the 18th century, it was important to the French State to limit obstacles to trade from quarantines. This same kind of reasoning—to ease the minds of troops destined for the Egyp- tian campaign—prompted BONAPARTE to ask the Institut to solemnly declare that plague was a nontransmittable disease. Political reasoning had to gain from scientific discourse. The accent put on anti-contagionism and the refusal to consider contagion as a cause of illness led to the search for another etiological explanation, namely heredity.

Antoine PORTAL (1742-1832) provides a typical example of the consequent 'rush job' to use empirical data and some philosophical and metaphysical presuppositions to elaborate a theory on the recurrence of illnesses by heredity. During his career he produced forty widely diffused trea- tises on various diseases. Contagion being replaced by the notion of 'family diseases', he advocated the heredity of diseases in most of his works. PORTAL's system revolved around two simple prin- ciples. First, he remained true to the traditional Galenic conception that all disease was the effect of humoural imbalance. In the case of hereditary diseases, the lymph was involved. When the parents' lymph was poisoned, they transmitted a preexisting germ, a 'scrofulous virus' to the fetus. Second, PORTAL wanted to establish a theory of hereditary disease that allowed him to explain the facts observed in his experience as an anatomist. He considered his experience a unique and revealing proof: having practised so many autopsies without catching any chronic disease he con- cluded that chronic diseases were a matter of heredity rather than of contagion.

• French and British Conceptions of Hereditary Transmission in the 19th Century: The Conflicts Between Galton and Ribot, and Galton and de Candolle, Carlos Lopez Beltran, UNAM, Mexico

I will begin by reviewing some of the main ways in which the issue of hereditary transmission of physical and mental characteristics was understood by several important authors in Britain (HUNTER, PRICHARD, LA WRENCE, SPENCER) and France (PETIT, PIORRY, VIREY, FLOURENS, LUCAS). I will argue that different conceptual delimitations and projects produced divergent con- ceptions of heredity that evolved relatively independently from one another. Whereas the French savants conceived of heredity as a powerful overarching natural vital, force that constituted one of the main threads of the history of life, the British thinkers preferred a more restrained approach in which the theorising was typically delayed in the face of conflicting evidence. After the 1860s, as heredity was being brought to the front as a central biological problem, the divergence became progressively unavoidable, as metaphorical language could not be so easily used as a cushion to avoid confrontation. Francis GALTON reacted very sharply to the writings of the French psycholo- gist Théodule RIBOT and the Swiss botanist Alphonse DE CANDOLLE. By analysing his reactions and the polemics that ensued I will try to flesh out the roots of the divergences and the attempts to bridge them.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR2 SESSION IV

Picturing Eggs, Embryos, and Cells I: Eggs and Embryos in Situ Organizer: Sabine Brauckmann, Chair: Denis Thieffry _______________________________________________________________________________

• Introduction

• The Unpublished Drawings of Karl Ernst von Baer, Erki Tammiksaar, Baer Museum, Tartu

In 1822, when BAER was promoted to a full professorship at the University of Königsberg, he es- tablished a Museum of Zoology and intensified his comparative embryological studies that finally led to the discovery of the mammalian and human egg. The findings were published in his seminal work on the Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere (1828), which illustrated the Bildung of embry- onic eggs in three schematic tables. BAER did include mere drawings for two reasons. First, as he wrote in the introduction, he preferred the pictorial lucidness to the accuracy of microscopic obser- vation. The other reason was that he himself lacked the professional training of an engraver. In our paper we will present new findings of unpublished drawings by BAER and will discuss his difficul- ties to find an experienced illustrator who could realiter reproduce the embryonic image BAER had observed in and with the microscope. In addition, we will argue for the importance of the epi- genetic typus that envisaged BAER's ideas of development, and for the visual awareness in micro- scopic experimenting of the 19th century.

• What Made Haeckel's Drawings of Embryos Controversial? Nick Hopwood, Cambridge U, UK

The pictures of embryos in Ernst HAECKEL's semi-popular books are the most notorious images in the history of biology. Claims that 'the German DARWIN' forged drawings to exaggerate the sim- ilarity of early vertebrate embryos were first made in 1868, hotly debated during the 1870s and again around 1908, and revived in the late 1990s. Since then accusations of fraud have been much bandied about. This talk argues that to grasp the general significance of HAECKEL's pictures we need to place them in the history of communicating scientific images, specifically those of embry- onic development. It then takes a close look at the pictures' initial publication and early reception. This makes it possible to assess their novelty and to identify the processes through which they were made controversial.

• The Political Embryo: Representing the Human Embryo at 6-7 Weeks, Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College, USA

The human embryo has become a potent political symbol. Depending on how it is represented, it can represent an independent life form, a human being, a parasite, and a not-so-human animal. Several changes occurring during embryonic weeks 6 and 7 cause the embryonic form to take a re- cognizably human shape. The yes come forward in the head, and the elbows and fingers become recognizable. The depiction of the embryo is affects and is affected by political debates and also by the conventions of modern science textbooks. Drawing has become much more cartoon-like, and gene expression boundaries are often more important than the anatomical structure. Our initial observations suggest an abstraction both of structure (from gross anatomical entity to gene expres- sion profiles) and of artwork (from detailed stippling showing physical contours and to line draw- ings showing little or no physical details). The matter of context is also important, and I hope to be able to discuss those illustrations depicting the embryo within its uterine context versus those who (again, an abstraction) separate the fetus from its maternal milieu.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR5 SESSION V

Complexity: What is it Good For? I

Organizer and Chair: Lien Van Speybroeck _______________________________________________________________________________

• Complexity Science to Understand Living Organisms: Kant and Beyond, Lien Van Speybroeck and Gertrudis Van de Vijver, Ghent U, Belgium

Today, witnessed by the enormous amount of publications in areas as diverse as philosophy, biol- ogy, cognitive psychology, sociology, and management studies, it seems to have become a general truism that (living) entities are in fact complex dynamical systems that develop and evolve in re- lation to complex environments. Although this approach is depicted as a revolutionary alternative to reductionist, centrist, and instructionist views, it is not always made explicit where exactly its true revolutionary aspects lie: Does it make living organisms more real (ontological level)?, Does it make us understand better the intrinsic nature of living organisms?, and Does it offer more illu- cidating ways to model them (epistemological level)?; Does it guide us to develop new tools and research programmes, or more modestly, to ask different questions about living organisms, and are these questions within reach of being answered (pragmatical level)? One thing is sure: next to phil- osophy of biology, the complexity terminology is invading biology itself, which seems to make talking about self-organization and systems biology as easy as talking about DNA and proteins. Other concepts, such as organisational cohesion, boundary, closure, process and structural hier- archy, emergence, downward causation, constraint, etc., are equally high-scoring and heavily de- bated in philosophy of biology. However, what is the exact impact of this complexity discourse? And in what sense are the above concepts and their underlying ideas of use to the biologist or to the philosopher? How do they shed light on what orthodox views blackbox? Or is the level of ab- straction too high, running the risk of capturing nothing but what is intuitively already known? This paper investigates how the debate developed with regard to KANT's view on living organisms.

• What is Life? Is Complexity the Answer? Michel Morange, École Normale Supérieure, France

In the 1960s, the question 'What is Life?' disappeared from the discourse of biologists. It was con- sidered to have been answered: the riddle of Life was finding its solution in the existence of a ge- netic information and of a genetic program. Today, the question 'What is Life?' is no longer taboo, as it was during the last two decades: it is raised again by biologists, and its answer is now looked for in the burgeoning theories and models of complexity. My aim will be to explain this evolution by the transformations which occurred in biology during the last decades, as well as by events ex- ternal to biology, such as the development of astrobiology. I will compare the answers referring to complexity to the other answers provided simultaneously by the same or other biologists.

• Irreducible Complexity in Biology, John Collier, U of Natal, South Africa

Many of the terms used in complexity theory are equivocal or vague, leading to much confusion about the need for special methods to deal with biological complexity. Many complex systems can be approached through approximate linear methods and/or by numerical modelling. One issue of interest is whether there are biological systems or properties that require alternative approaches, and thus differ in kind from systems that can be so approximated, or whether they just differ in degree of complexity to the extent that traditional methods from physics are just inconvenient to apply. After introducing a suitable taxonomy of complexity, I will argue that there is a class of systems that I call complexly organized, which cannot be fully analyzed using numerical methods, even approximately. These systems appear in physics, where they are fairly well understood. I will describe the conditions for such systems, then I will argue that at organisms and at least some of their properties are of this sort. Finally I will argue that such properties are coextensive with the set of system properties that result from spontaneous self-organization. Elsewhere, I have argued that

this is the set of strongly emergent properties. Hence, modulo grammatical niceties, organized complexity corresponds to spontaneously organized, corresponds to strongly emergent.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR6 SESSION VI

Konrad Lorenz and Company

Organizer and Chair: Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr. _______________________________________________________________________________

• Konrad Lorenz as a Student of Karl Bühler, Veronika Hofer, U of Vienna, Austria

This paper focuses on a hitherto unknown aspect of LORENZ's intellectual biography. It investi- gates the history and the systematic consequences of the fact that LORENZ received all of his aca- demic education in psychology under Karl BÜHLER, at the time (1928) when he was about to begin a second career in animal psychology. Under the influence of BÜHLER and his assistant Egon BRUNSWIK, the 25-year old LORENZ was first 'imprinted' with psychological theories and method. This provided him with his orientation within the vast and multiparadigmatic field of psychology in his day. I will demonstrate the ways in which the biologically-oriented and communication- based psychology of BÜHLER and BRUNSWIK provided the particular conceptual framework that served as LORENZ ' starting point in comparative psychology.

I will provide an outline of the core themes of the BÜHLER-BRUNSWIK school of Viennese psy- chology in order to analyze the similarities in the psychological concepts of BÜHLER, BRUNSWIK, and LORENZ in more detail. The history of their personal relationship is almost as compelling as the insights in the transformations of the respective theoretical and methodological conceptions. Utilizing new archival materials, we can identify a previously unknown part of LORENZ' complex personality.

• "Howling with the Wolf Pack": Konrad Lorenz and National Socialism Revisited, Benedikt Föger and Klaus Taschwer, U of Vienna, Austria

The 'brown past' of Konrad LORENZ has been discussed for exactly 50 years now. After Daniel LEHRMAN's first famous critique in 1953, and especially after Theodora W. KALIKOW's papers in the late 1970s, LORENZ' entanglement with National Socialism was thematized in quite a few papers and books both by biologists and historians of biology. Still, many questions remain heav- ily disputed: What were the reasons for LORENZ to become a member of the NSDAP? What moti- vated him to publish papers in which he was "howling with the wolf pack," as he put it in 1950? Did LORENZ's biopolitical hypotheses and propositions simply support the mainstream of Nazi ideology or did they also differ in some relevant points? What did LORENZ know about the crimes and cruelties of the regime? What happened in Posen (Poznan), where LORENZ first worked as a psychologist for the army and later on as a psychiatrist? In our paper we try to answer these ques- tions on the basis of documents that were known already but also on the basis of recently found material.

• Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen: Complementarities and Conflicts Between the Co- founders of Ethology, Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

LORENZ and TINBERGEN are properly regarded as the co-founders of ethology. The present paper explores the long-term relations between LORENZ and TINBERGEN, paying particular attention to the factors that established and maintained their friendship and collaboration and also to the va- rious differences in practice, personality, politics, and understandings of animal behavior that dis- tinguished the two of them and led to some frictions between them.

While LORENZ took the lead when it came to laying the field's initial conceptual foundations, TINBERGEN's experimental and analytical talents were an invaluable complement to LORENZ's theory-building. And while LORENZ championed the insights that could be obtained by studying

the behavior patterns of birds that he reared by hand, TINBERGEN always preferred to be a field naturalist studying creatures in the wild. Where LORENZ was inclined to emphasize the compara- tive study of instinctive behavior patterns along the traditional lines of the comparative mor- phologist, TINBERGEN went on to develop an understanding of the function of behavior patterns in specific ecological contexts. The firm friendship LORENZ and TINBERGEN established by1937 was severely strained by the WWII. TINBERGEN's decision to put aside deeply-felt wartime grievances for the sake of ethology's postwar recovery was of real importance for the field's subsequent development.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR10 SESSION VII

Genetics and Policy-making

Organizer: Heather Douglas, Chair: John S. Emrich _______________________________________________________________________________

• From Recombinant DNA to Stem Cells: Genetics, Cultural Authority, and Public Policy, John S. Emrich, George Washington U, USA

Scientists have derived a great deal of their cultural authority from the promise that their new dis- coveries and techniques will provide a better life, whether it be through cheaper electricity, greater domestic protection, or through a longer and healthier life. It is through the creation and sustaining of cultural authority that public policy is created to promote science and assuage public fears. In the 1970s, the creation of public policy began to change as the public began to question the authority of all of the branches of science, from Rachel CARSON's Silent Spring to protests over nuclear power plants to the controversy concerning recombinant DNA. Unlike nuclear physics, which boosts the support and strictly regulated protection of the USA government, genetics does not have the prestige of the federal government in creating public policy. Since the late 1970s, public policy concerning genetics has largely reflected the cultural authority of geneticists in the USA It is therefore important to understand how geneticists have created and lost their cultural authority and how their relationship with the public has impacted the creation of public policy in the past and today.

When recombinant DNA was first created in 1971 it held the promise to cure that disease as well as many other genetic maladies. The initial excitement over the new technology soon gave way to concerns from other geneticists that the technology put biologists in a 'pre-Hiroshima' situation In order to guarantee the safe use of the technology and avoid strict government regulations, the geneticists created their own policy that was quickly approved by the federal government lack of public involvement. Though they were able to create their own public policy, the cultural authority of genetics was damaged. Throughout the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the rise of bioethics, the greater involvement of the pubic in policy decisions, and the unfulfilled medical promises of recombinant DNA caused the authority of genetics to ebb.

The launch of the Human Genome Project (HGP) in 1990 gave a lift to the cultural authority of genetics as the project promised therapies and cures for genetic diseases. The HGP was not devoid of a public voice as the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues branch was included. Though it is still to early to tell if the HGP will succeed in it promises, genetics once again finds itself in the midst of a potentially restrictive public policy. Recently stem cell and cloning, both therapeutic and reproduc- tive, have posed a new threat on genetics' cultural authority. This threat is given a public voice by President BUSH and his belief that the "fundamental value and sanctity of human life" outweighs his "desire to promote vital medical research." It is within the context of genetic cultural authority and how it has changed that we might be able to understand how and why two new promising techniques might be severely restricted by public policy in the USA

• Human Molecular Genetics: Two Different Approaches, Adelaida Ambrogi, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain

In the first part of this paper I will focus on KITCHER's (1996) book. I will stress the importance of this book, not only because of the scientific field he has chosen as the object of his analysis, but also because of the kind of issues he identifies as key issues for that analysis. Yet my aim is not to review the book, but rather to use it as a starting point for exploring some more general issues con- cerning the philosophy of biology. KITCHER's book is not an epistemological book. It is about the ethical and social issues raised by the advances in human molecular genetics. Yet, my general aim will be to show to what extent the belief in the supposed sharp distinction between epistemological and ethical issues frame the philosophical analysis of science. Firstly, I will show that in this book the author's epistemological assumptions condition the ethical-social content of the book. More- over, I will show that this fact has significant consequences. As an example, I will focus on the key proposal of the book: utopian eugenics. From my overall analysis of the book, I will infer two conclusions: a specific one, about utopian eugenics itself, and another more general conclusion. I will try to show that a significant consequence of assuming that sharp distinction as starting point of the analysis, is the distortion of both, the task of identification of key issues, and the choosing of the proper approach to study the nature of such issues. My next step will be to provide a view of the place and nature of philosophical analysis regarding the key scientific field of human mole- cular genetics. This view will be taken from major professional journals on philosophy of biology. I will not present, of course, a systematic search, but rather a significant sampling of it. The aim will be to look for the weight KITCHER's assumptions have in the philosophical community. I will end the paper by offering a proposal of my own. In my proposal I start by considering a particular field of research in human molecular genetics, i.e., the genetics of breast cancer. I will try to show to what extent and under what conditions an alternative starting point to the one assumed by KIT- CHER will result in a different agenda of key issues in human molecular genetics; an agenda, more- over, that will require different kind of answers to the questions raised by these issues.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR9 SESSION VIII

The Extended Phenotype Revisited I

Organizers: Kim Sterelny and Matteo Mameli, Chair: Matteo Mameli _______________________________________________________________________________

• The Implications of Niche Construction for Evolution, Kevin N. Laland, U of St. Andrews, Scotland

The seemingly innocent observation that the activities of organisms bring about changes in en- vironments is so obvious that it seems an unlikely focus for a new line of thinking about evolution. Yet niche construction, as this process of organism-driven environmental modification is known, has hidden complexities. By transforming biotic and abiotic sources of natural selection in external environments, niche construction generates feedback in evolution, on a scale hitherto under- estimated, and in a manner that transforms the evolutionary dynamic. While The Extended Pheno- type can be regarded as a logical and pragmatic means of tackling niche construction within the framework of standard evolutionary theory, this framework leaves the generality and significance of niche construction under-appreciated. Standard evolutionary theory affords niche construction the sole status of product of evolution, but short-circuits its fundamental role in the evolutionary process. A complete understanding of the impact of niche construction in evolution requires an Extended Evolutionary Theory (ODLING-SMEE et al., 20f03), which recognizes that evolution de- pends on two general selective processes, not one; natural selection and niche construction. We support this argument with empirical data, theoretical population genetics and conceptual models, and describe new research methods that could be employed to put it to the test.

• The Implications of Niche Construction for Ecology, John Odling-Smee, U of Oxford, UK

By expressing extended phenotypes, and by modifying natural selection pressures, organisms generate feedback in evolution. This process of 'niche construction' changes the evolutionary dy- namic. It also brings forward the synthesis of the disciplines of ecology and evolution, for in- stance, by making it possible to incorporate abiotic ecosystem components more fully in evo- lutionary theory. This paper will discuss this potential synthesis. It will also demonstrate how niche construction supports the ecological process of 'ecosystem engineering', and how by doing so, it contributes to the regulation of energy fluxes and nutrient flows through ecosystems.

• Extended Genotypes, Extended Phenotypes and the Nature of Inheritance, Matteo Mameli, London School of Economics, UK

Parents cause their offspring's existence. Moreover, parents cause their offspring to acquire many features similar to those the parents have. These two kinds of causal influence that parents exert on their offspring are logically distinct. Inheritance refers to the second kind of causal influence. On our planet (but not in other possible worlds), parents can cause their offspring to acquire features similar to the parental ones in two ways: (1) by means of genetic transmission, i.e., by providing the offspring with copies of the parental genes; and (2) by means of some kinds of (non-reproduc- tive) parental behaviours, i.e., by performing behaviours that (in some way or another) affect the phenotypes of the offspring and make these phenotypes similar to those of the parents. Processes of the first kind can be called 'the extended-genotype route to inheritance'. Processes of the second kind can be called 'the extended-phenotype route to inheritance'. This paper explores some of the features of the extended phenotype route to inheritance and the ways this route compares to and interacts with the extended-genotype route to inheritance.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR7 SESSION IX

Biological Modeling I

Contributed Papers, Chair: Michael Weisberg _______________________________________________________________________________

• Tradeoffs in Biological Model Building, Michael Weisberg, U of Pennsylvania, USA

In this paper I consider a set of tradeoffs which confront biological model builders. Any discussion of the tradeoffs confronting the model builder owes a large debt to Richard LEVINS' pioneering discussions of these issues. But rather than focus on LEVINS' work, I will discuss a series of two- way relationships between generality and other properties of models. Although my primary goal in this paper is to defend the existence of these tradeoffs and other relationships, I will also discuss how they bare on discussions of model-based scientific explanation in population biology.

• Understanding the Usefulness of Biological Models,
Sabina Leonelli, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

In her recent Making Sense of Life (2002), Evelyn Fox KELLER argues that models used in the life sciences posses properties that distinguish them from the ones used in other sciences. Biologists strongly prefer models that are immediately useful in an actual experimental setting. Also, suc- cessful models in experimental biology tend to be 'whole organisms' rather than abstract schemati- sations exemplifying a few isolated properties of a physical entity or process. Especially since the demise of the 'master molecule' view in genetics, models are used to acquire an understanding of the dynamic interconnections among individual components which characterise life processes. KELLER's pragmatic and holistic concerns are reflected in her claim that the explanatory utility of the model is fundamental to its selection, its role in experiments and its interpretation.

This paper developsKELLER's defence of the uniqueness of biological models by focusing on her definition of explanatory utility. I argue with her that this notion should be explicitly related to the notion of scientific understanding: hence, I maintain, a discussion of the philosophical significance and meaning of this latter notion should not be limited to KELLER's suggestive reflections. In order to clarify her account, I propose a distinction between two types of scientific understanding, that is between the understanding provided by a model in the context of discovery and the use that biologists make of such understanding in explanation and justification. The former, or creative understanding, refers to the individual critical engagement in scientific research that leads to un- expected theoretical insights. The latter is defined as communicative understanding, i.e., the social sharing of the insight acquired at the individual level. Given this distinction, I suggest that the use- fulness and the explanatory power of a model in the life sciences should be evaluated in light of the type of understanding provided by the model itself. I shall support my claim by reference to the history of cell biology—particularly to the way in which different models of the cell membrane (since its 'discovery' in the 17th century) have enabled and shaped our current understanding of cell physiology and intercellular connectivity.

• On Middle-Range Theories, Pablo Lorenzano, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina

SCHAFFNER points out that most of the debate in philosophy of biology about the structure of the- ories has taken place in isolation from major changes in the general philosophy of science and has tended to be concentrated in the area of evolutionary biology, neglecting other areas, in particular those which he argues are more typical in the biomedical sciences and possesses 'theories of the middle range'. These theories—which lacks of universality and are 'interlevel' and more 'reti- culated' and less 'linear' than those of physics—are better characterized as (overlapping) collec- tions of models. In accordance to that, SUPPE holds that the unmodified Semantic Conception, which has been utilized by BEA TTY, LLOYD, and THOMPSON to analyze evolutionary theory, can accommodate and provide philosophical understanding of these interlevel middle range theories. On the other hand, SCHAFFNER considers that a modified version of the Semantic Conception could give a better account of the characteristic features of these theories. In this communication, I will try to show that another semantic or model-theoretic approach, namely, the Structuralist View of Theories, can do this job without need for modification or loss.

• The Evolution of Germ and Soma: An Evaluation of the Models, Grant Yamashita, U of California, Davis, USA

The transition from unicellularity to multicellularity was a major transition in the history of life. The differentiation of cells into two distinct types, germ and soma, followed this transition. Germ cells, on a strict definition, give rise to individuals in the next generation while somatic cells do not. Over the last two decades, models by BUSS, MICHOD, MAYNARD-SMITH; SZATHMÁRY, BELL and KOUFOPANOU; and others have been proposed that attempt to understand the evolution of this distinction. In this paper I evaluate the models and discuss the importance of a consistent and ro- bust conception of germ cells to these models. I outline the prospect for a coherent, robust account of the evolution of this key character of multicellularity.

Thursday, 2-3:30 PM, LR3 SESSION X

Ecology Transformed

Organizer and Chair: Ed Hackett _______________________________________________________________________________

• Human Dimensions of Ecology, Jim Collins, Arizona State U, USA
Integrating humans into basic ecological research questions is a pressing issue for scientists and

policy makers that would benefit from historical and sociological analysis. Humans are an integral 27

part of Earth's ecosystems, yet ecologists conducting basic research often place humans external to the biological system. As a result the science of ecology largely lacks a theoretical and conceptual framework for incorporating humans. Where exactly do humans fit into modern ecological the- ory?

ISHPSSB 2003 Vienna Programme, Session Abstracts and Abstracts

JULY 16-20, KLI and University of Vienna

JULY 16-20 KLI and University of Vienna Vienna, Austria

President (2001-2003) – Lindley Darden Past President (1999-2001) – Richard Burian President Elect (2003-2005) – Michael R. Dietrich

JULY 16-20
KLI and University of Vienna Vienna, Austria