Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology
Mary P. Winsor
University of Toronto
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Rock, Paper, Scissors: Biologists, Philosophers, and Historians Play Upon the History of Systematics.
In the middle of the 20th century, although leading historians of science declared taxonomy distinctly uninteresting, a few biologists discovered that reassessments of long-dead figures, including Plato, Aristotle, Linnaeus and Darwin, could contribute to contemporary biological debates. Several philosophers, some by accident and some purposefully, injected extra portent into the biologists' analyses. The resulting new view of the history of systematic biology, powerfully narrated in the 1960s by Ernst Mayr, cast in the role of villain a problematical entity called essentialism. Although the essentialism story was gently doubted by a few historians, it escaped direct challenge until very recently. Quite apart from the biological issues at stake, the episode points to the incongruent aims and methods of the several branches of academia that tell stories about the past.
4:00PM
Monday, February 14
203 Wheeler Hall Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: Office@ohst7.berkeley.edu
