scholarly journals The History of Acta Biotheoretica and the Nature of Theoretical Biology

2005 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. C. Reydon ◽  
Piet Dullemeijer ◽  
Lia Hemerik
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
History Of

Introduction—A Bit of History

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irving R. Epstein ◽  
John A. Pojman
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Living System ◽  
Oscillatory Behavior ◽  
Chemical Dynamics ◽  
Oscillating Reactions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Satisfactory Answer ◽  
Nonlinear Chemical Dynamics

Oscillations of chemical origin have been present as long as life itself. Every living system contains scores, perhaps hundreds, of chemical oscillators. The systematic study of oscillating chemical reactions and of the broader field of nonlinear chemical dynamics is of considerably more recent origin, however. In this chapter, we present a brief and extremely idiosyncratic overview of some of the history of nonlinear chemical dynamics. In 1828, Fechner described an electrochemical cell that produced an oscillating current, this being the first published report of oscillations in a chemical system. Ostwald observed in 1899 that the rate of chromium dissolution in acid periodically increased and decreased. Because both systems were inhomogeneous, it was believed then, and through much of our own century, that homogeneous oscillating reactions were impossible. Degn wrote in 1972 (p. 302): “It is hard to think of any other question which already occupied chemists in the nineteenth century and still has not received a satisfactory answer.” In that same year, though, answers were coming. How it took so long for the nature of oscillating chemical reactions to be understood and how that understanding eventually came about will be the major focus of this chapter. Although oscillatory behavior can be seen in many chemical systems, we shall concentrate primarily on homogeneous, isothermal reactions in aqueous solution. In later chapters, we shall broaden our horizons a bit. While the study of oscillating reactions did not become well established until the mid-1970s, theoretical discussions go back to at least 1910. We consider here some of the early theoretical and experimental work that led up to the ideas of Prigogine on nonequilibrium thermodynamics and to the experimental and theoretical work of Belousov, Zhabotinsky, Field, Körös, and Noyes, all of whom did much to persuade chemists that chemical oscillations, traveling fronts, and other phenomena that now comprise the repertoire of nonlinear chemical dynamics were deserving of serious study. Alfred Lotka was one of the more interesting characters in the history of science. He wrote a handful of theoretical papers on chemical oscillation during the early decades of this century and authored a monograph (1925) on theoretical biology that is filled with insights that still seem fresh today.

The Specter of the Past: What the History of Theoretical Biology Means Today

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred D. Laubichler
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

The conquest of vitalism or the eclipse of organicism? The 1930s Cambridge organizer project and the social network of mid-twentieth-century biology

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIK PETERSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Micro Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the 1930s, two concepts excited the European biological community: the organizer phenomenon and organicism. This essay examines the history of and connection between these two phenomena in order to address the conventional ‘rise-and-fall’ narrative that historians have assigned to each. Scholars promoted the ‘rise-and-fall’ narrative in connection with a broader account of the devitalizing of biology through the twentieth century. I argue that while limited evidence exists for the ‘fall of the organizer concept’ by the 1950s, the organicism that often motivated the organizer work had no concomitant fall – even during the mid-century heyday of molecular biology. My argument is based on an examination of shifting social networks of life scientists from the 1920s to the 1970s, many of whom attended or corresponded with members of the Cambridge Theoretical Biology Club (1932–1938). I conclude that the status and cohesion of these social networks at the micro scale was at least as important as macro-scale conceptual factors in determining the relative persuasiveness of organicist philosophy.

scholarly journals The problem of historical-philosophical classification and methodological questions of studying the French post-structuralism

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Sergei Aleksandrovich Gashkov
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Heuristic Methods ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Social Time ◽  
Philosophical Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject of this research is conditions for the creation of nontrivial classifications for the historical-philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of French “post-structuralism”. The author believes that the term “post-structuralism” is a historical-philosophical abstraction insofar that the researchers do not take into consideration a specificity of the thought of French philosophers in the space between modernism and classicism. The article also examines the instances when the “post-structuralists” (Foucault, Castoriadis) address the problem of classification and systematization of philosophical knowledge based on the attempt to classify sciences that has been carried out in French rationalism by Goblot and Meyerson. The research employs the historical-philosophical methods for rationalizing the project of “nontrivial” philosophical classification as a uniform intellectual process, although it is yet to be discerned and finalized. The novelty of this work consists in the fact that the author not only applied the methods of nontrivial classification developed in cognitive linguistics (Lakoff) and theoretical biology (Meien) to the historical-philosophical process, but made an attempt to demonstrate that the development of such heuristic methods is possible within the framework of the history of philosophy as a discipline. The author examined the “archaeological” analytics of biology of Foucault and the concept of social time in of Castoriadis.

scholarly journals How Soon Hath Time… A History of Two “Seminal” Publications

Cells ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 287
Author(s):  
Geoff A. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Sperm Competition ◽  
Seminal Fluid ◽  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
Female Reproduction ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Powerful Explanation ◽  
Gamete Competition ◽  
Multicellular Organisms

This review documents the history of the two papers written half a century ago that relate to this special issue of Cells. The first, “Sperm competition and its evolutionary consequences in the insects” (Biological Reviews, 1970), stressed that sexual selection continues after ejaculation, resulting in many adaptations (e.g., postcopulatory guarding phases, copulatory plugs, seminal fluid components that modify female reproduction, and optimal ejaculation strategies), an aspect not considered by Darwin in his classic treatise of 1871. Sperm competition has subsequently been studied in many taxa, and post-copulatory sexual selection is now considered an important sequel to Darwinian pre-copulatory sexual selection. The second, “The origin and evolution of gamete dimorphism and the male-female phenomenon” (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1972) showed how selection, based on gamete competition between individuals, can give rise to anisogamy in an isogamous broadcast spawning ancestor. This theory, which has subsequently been developed in various ways, is argued to form the most powerful explanation of why there are two sexes in most multicellular organisms. Together, the two papers have influenced our general understanding of the evolutionary differentiation of the two forms of gametic cells, and the divergence of sexual strategies between males and females under sexual selection.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document