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Styles of Reasoning in Early to Mid-Victorian Life Research: Analysis:Synthesis and Palaetiology

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Journal of the History of Biology (2006) Ó Springer 2006 DOI 10.1007/s10739-006-0006-4 Styles of Reasoning in Early to Mid-Victorian Life Research: Analysis:Synthesis and Palaetiology JAMES ELWICK Science and Technology Studies Faculties of Arts and Science and Engineering York University 4700 Keele St. M3J 1P3 Toronto, ON Canada E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. To better understand the work of pre-Darwinian British life researchers in their own right, this paper discusses two different styles of reasoning. On the one hand there was analysis:synthesis, where an organism was disintegrated into its constituent parts and then reintegrated into a whole; on the other hand there was palaetiology, the historicist depiction of the progressive specialization of an organism. This paper shows how each style allowed for development, but showed it as moving in opposite directions. In analysis:synthesis, development proceeded centripetally, through the fusion of parts. Meanwhile in palaetiology, development moved centrifugally, through the ramifying specialization of an initially simple substance. I first examine a com- munity of analytically oriented British life researchers, exemplified by Richard Owen, and certain technical questions they considered important. These involved the neu- rosciences, embryology, and reproduction and regeneration. The paper then looks at a new generation of British palaetiologists, exemplified by W.B. Carpenter and T.H. Huxley, who succeeded at portraying analysts’ questions as irrelevant. The link between styles of reasoning and physical sites is also explored. Analysts favored museums, which facilitated the examination and display of unchanging marine organisms while providing a power base for analysts. I suggest that palaetiologists were helped by vivaria, which included marine aquaria and Wardian cases. As they became popular in the early 1850s, vivaria provided palaetiologists with a different kind of living and changing evidence. Forms of evidence, how they were preserved and examined, and career options all reinforced each other: social and epistemic factors thus merged. Keywords: analysis, Charles Darwin, George Newport, museums, neurosciences, palaetiology, regeneration, reproduction, Richard Owen, Robert E. Grant, serial homology, styles of reasoning, synthesis, T.H. Huxley, W.B. Carpenter JAMES ELWICK Introduction This paper introduces a new dichotomy for historians of nineteenth century biology: analysis:synthesis and palaetiology. These two catego- ries reveal differences unexplored by other dualisms such as form versus function, philosophical anatomy versus natural theological functional- ism, or epigenesis versus preformationism. Nor do they seem linked with contemporary concerns about materialism. Most importantly, this dualism allows us to better appreciate the aims of British pre-Darwinian life researchers in their own right. I focus on the life sciences in Victo- rian Britain – specifically London – between the late 1820s and the early 1850s, emphasizing marine invertebrate research. Obviously the usual warnings about subtle differences and fine nuances ignored by this theoretical scheme apply – all maps must omit certain points if they are to highlight new and interesting features of the terrain. Analysis:synthesis and palaetiology were styles of reasoning, self- reinforcing norms for what counted as good research. I use ‘styles of reasoning’ to group various historians’ terms for these categories. They include Alastair Crombie’s ‘‘styles of reasoning’’, further developed by Ian Hacking; Ludwik Fleck’s ‘‘thought-styles’’; Gerald Holton’s ‘‘the- mata;’’ Nicholas Jardine’s ‘‘scenes of inquiry;’’ and John Pickstone’s ‘‘ways of knowing.’’ For Hacking, a style of reasoning sets out what it is to reason rightly. It is epistemological. Historically, a style made certain kinds of inquiries possible, and yet by helping a researcher commit to solving certain problems, it also restricted and excluded alternative inquiries.1 This partly stemmed from how evidence was used in different styles – someone using one style of reasoning presupposed certain kinds of evidence to be more relevant than other kinds. In turn how evidence was generated, stored and examined helped to shape the favored workplaces of each style. This helped set out possible career alternatives for researchers. Exploring styles of reasoning helps us fuse researchers’ social and epistemic commitments. This paper first compares analysis:synthesis and palaetiology. It then closely examines the style of analysis:synthesis in the life sciences, and some of the areas considered important by analysts:2 the neurosciences, classification by nervous structure, development, and regeneration/ reproduction. Richard Owen was one researcher committed to analy- 1 The best overviews of this are in Crombie, 1988; Iliffe, 1998. Another discussion is in Kusch, 1991, p. 94. See also Collingwood, 1939, pp. 29–30, Holton, 1988, pp. 41–42, 83–84; Harwood, 1993; Jardine, 2000, pp. 3–4, 77; Hacking, 2002, pp. 181–182. 2 For brevity I use this term to refer to those practicing analysis:synthesis. STYLES OF REASONING IN EARLY TO MID-VICTORIAN LIFE RESEARCH sis:synthesis. The paper then moves on to consider palaetiology in more detail, and its emphasis on von Baerian embryology. T.H. Huxley and W.B. Carpenter exemplify palaetiology. The paper ends with Owen’s 1858 attempt to reclassify mammals in an analytic:synthetic way, an attempt which Huxley reinterpreted (or misinterpreted) palaetiologi- cally. A Comparison of Analysis:Synthesis and Palaetiology A quick way to contrast the two styles is to appropriate two different images used by Georges Canguilhem to explain the history of mor- phology. Canguilhem saw morphologists as guided by one of two irreconcilable pictures. Some saw living things as discontinuous: as composites of discrete parts. Others saw organisms as continuous: all growing out of an initial simple and plastic material.3 Canguilhem’s first image nicely captures how analysis:synthesis portrays living things as composites. His second can be used to depict palaetiology’s emphasis on continuity and unity. Analysis:synthesis has been closely examined by the philosophers of biology William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson. And it has been extensively discussed as a ‘‘way of knowing’’ by historian of medicine John Pickstone.4 Analysts thought that the best kind of knowledge was obtained by disintegrating systems or organizations into their simpler constituent parts, called elements, and then seeing those systems as nothing but aggregations of those elements. Organisms were one such kind of system. Analysis:synthesis was thus a doublet. It gained strength in Britain in the late 1820s – imported largely from France, by British researchers with an inferiority complex. They used it to strengthen their hold on museums, where analysis:synthesis mattered the most. Museums and analysis:synthesis went well together because museums could store vast amounts of elementary structures, which could then be compared. This favored the sedentary researcher over the field natu- ralist, a point noted by Georges Cuvier himself.5 This kind of evidence is unchanging. In marine invertebrate zoology of the time, for instance, museum evidence consisted of bleached specimens kept in wine-spirit filled glass jars. The individuals, their tissues, and their cells could not interact or transform. 3 Canguilhem, 1994, p. 163. 4 Bechtel and Richardson, 1993, pp. 18–21; Pickstone, 1993; Pickstone, 1994. 5 Outram, 1996, pp. 259–262. JAMES ELWICK Meanwhile the term ‘palaetiology’ was coined by philosopher Wil- liam Whewell in his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences.6 Palaetiol- ogists espoused that the best kind of knowledge was understanding how organizations and systems changed over time, becoming more complex out of simple origins. Whewell saw palaetiologists studying how ‘‘phe- nomena at each step become more and more complicated, by involving the results of all that has preceded, modified by supervening agencies.’’7 He was not so much a pontificator - setting out rules that ought to be followed by researchers – as someone who recognized similar practices. Whewell can thus be seen as listing ‘‘exemplar disciplines’’ to be prof- itably copied by other fields.8 Palaetiology in turn was largely brought into Britain from Germany – for example, Martin Barry imported von Baerian embry- ology in 1837.9 It was thence used by some British life researchers to challenge an older generation of British analysts. They cited evidence that changed over time, which meant that palaetiological life research usually occurred in different sites than analytical research. Against the analysts’ museum, one relevant locus of palaetiologists’ activities was the ‘vivarium.’ In the case of marine invertebrate zoology, this in- cluded such places as marine aquaria and the Wardian case. Vivaria facilitated the close control and observation of specimen-evidence over longer periods. An observer, comfortably indoors, could over several months watch a hydroid eventually change into a medusoid. Female water fleas could be isolated from male ones to ensure that one was indeed observing asexual reproduction. Vivaria only became wide- spread by the late 1840s. Many historians of biology are likely familiar with these styles, particularly ‘palaetiology.’ But to call palaetiology ‘developmentalism’ is imprecise, for both styles of reasoning allowed for development. I have chosen new terms because each style depicted different directions
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