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Molecular Evolution: Concepts and the Origin of Disciplines ARTICLE IN PRESS Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2009) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsc Molecular evolution: concepts and the origin of disciplines Edna Suárez-Díaz Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Circuito Exterior de Ciuad Universitaria, Coyoacán, DF 04510, México article info abstract Available online xxxx This paper focuses on the consolidation of Molecular Evolution, a field originating in the 1960s at the interface of molecular biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology, biophysics and studies on the origin of life and exobiology. The claim is made that Molecular Evolution became a discipline by integrating dif- Keywords: ferent sorts of scientific traditions: experimental, theoretical and comparative. The author critically incor- Disciplines porates Timothy Lenoir’s treatment of disciplines (1997), as well as ideas developed by Stephen Toulmin Molecular evolution (1962) on the same subject. On their account disciplines are spaces where the social and epistemic Molecular clock dimensions of science are deeply and complexly interwoven. However, a more detailed account of disci- Informational molecules pline formation and the dynamics of an emerging disciplinary field is lacking in their analysis. The pres- Traditions Concepts ent essay suggests focusing on the role of scientific concepts in the double configuration of disciplines: the social/political and the epistemic order. In the case of Molecular Evolution the concepts of molecular clock and informational molecules played a central role, both in differentiating molecular from classical evolutionists, and in promoting communication between the different sorts of traditions integrated in Molecular Evolution. The paper finishes with a reflection on the historicity of disciplines, and the histo- ricity of our concepts of disciplines. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 1. Introduction fragmentation and integration into new research fields, in rela- tively short spans of time. In this essay I will address the origins of Molecular Evolu- In this sense the history of Molecular Evolution is not dis- tion1, a research field originating in the 1960s in the interface sociated from what we may say about the history of molecu- of molecular biology, biochemistry and evolutionary biology lar biology. Both fields constitute products of the institutional and, to a lesser degree, of biophysics and studies on the origin and research opportunities of twentieth-century biology; and of life and exobiology. Many institutional features—including both have gone through rapid reconfigurations in this chang- journals, departments and professional societies linked to the ing context. Needless to say, such processes have an impact field—allow us to speak of it as a discipline (or a sub-discipline on the way historians think of contemporary disciplines now- of biology, depending on our perspective), and not just as a adays, and at the end of this essay I shall return to these ‘trans-disciplinary field’ of research. However, like many disci- concerns. plinary formations in the second half of the twentieth century Within the field of studies of science it is commonly acknowl- (including the broader field of molecular biology), Molecular edged that disciplines are spaces where the social (or professional) Evolution has gone through important transformations, including and epistemic dimensions of science are deeply and complexly E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 I shall write Molecular Evolution with capital letters to refer to the disciplinary formation, meanwhile using the term molecular evolution to speak of the evolutionary processes taking place at the molecular level. 1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.12.006 Please cite this article in press as: Suárez-Díaz, E. Molecular evolution: concepts and the origin of disciplines. Studies in History and Phi- losophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2009), doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.12.006 ARTICLE IN PRESS 2 E. Suárez-Díaz / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences xxx (2009) xxx–xxx interwoven. Far away are the days in which disciplines were iden- in the consolidation of the discipline. They did so by marking re- tified with scientific theories in the history and philosophy of sci- search and professional differences towards the more traditional ence literature.2 But even if we have made a lot of progress in the organismal approaches to biological evolution, and by bringing to- last decades in our knowledge about the structure of disciplines, gether the different traditions that gave birth to Molecular and have enriched it with detailed historical reconstructions, there Evolution. are still important issues that might be taken beyond the descriptive 3 tone either by attending new cases, or by revisiting the older ones. 2. Scientific traditions in the study of molecular evolution The account I am going to give is grounded on Timothy Lenoir’s treatment of disciplines (Lenoir, 1997). I will also use some sugges- By the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s the tive ideas developed by Stephen Toulmin (1962) on disciplines. ‘molecular vision of life’ started to permeate the study of biological Both Toulmin and Lenoir have written precise accounts regarding evolution. In many places (laboratories, research groups) and from the structure of disciplines, in particular the distinction within very different perspectives researchers began to apply the these complex entities between an institutional (or professional) experimental techniques and instruments of molecular biology 4 dimension and an intellectual programme. What is missed in these and biochemistry to many problems of biological evolution. This authors, however, is a thorough account of discipline formation and process can be seen as the molecularization of evolutionary biology a more detailed reflection of the dynamic elements in an emerging (de Chadarevian & Kamminga, 1998). Problems that had been the disciplinary field, an endeavor that has been only rarely addressed subject of population genetics, paleontology, and systematics in theoretical studies of disciplinary integration (such as Bachtel, began to be tackled with molecular tools. In some cases, as in the 1986 and 1993, p. 297 n. 2), but that has been treated extensively study of genetic variability in populations, the techniques used by recent histories of science (Kohler, 1982, Nye, 1993, and Nyhart, came from an earlier phase in the history of molecular biology, 1995 are good examples). In these cases disciplines are treated as for example, electrophoresis. In others cases, however, the devel- ‘political institutions that demarcate areas of academic territory, opment of molecular tools came in hand with its application to allocate the privileges and responsibilities of expertise, and structure evolutionary studies, as in the amino acid sequencing of proteins claims on resources’ (Kohler, 1982, p. 1). Thus, the origin and the or the use of nucleic acid hybridization (see below). Nevertheless shaping of disciplines is seen as the successful development of re- this does not mean that efforts to study evolution at the molecular search programs in institutional structures including university level had not been attempted in the past. departments, programs, chairs and professional societies (the case At the beginning of the twentieth century George Nuttall (1904) of biochemistry in the United States in the first half of the twentieth developed a research program to establish the relationship of bio- century, in Kohler, 1982), or not as successful—in terms of institu- logical species by using anti-sera immune reactions. His major tional structures—but enduring research programs in favorable so- work on the subject, Blood immunity and relationship was not an cial and research contexts (the case of morphology in Germany, in isolated effort, but illustrates the crucial connection between his the second half of the nineteenth century, in Nyhart, 1995). evolutionary concerns and the broader fields of immunology and Such historical analyses have given us inspiring accounts of the hematology at the beginning of the twentieth century (Wintraub, economic and political dimension of disciplines without forgetting 1980; Mourant, 1954). The first uses of molecules in the study of their role in the production of knowledge. However, one of the issues diversity and evolution, then, originated from the study of human that deserve more attention is the role of scientific concepts, and not blood groups, which in turn had resulted from the practice of blood only of broad research programs or research styles, in the double transfusion connected to the needs of war, and the study of human configuration of disciplines: the social/political and the epistemic (Kay, 1993) populations. Later on, and also within the context of order. This is so because concepts are one of the most conspicuous hematology and the needs of Second World War, the study of ‘tools of cognition and communication’ (Lenoir, 1997) that a disci- hemoglobin and the identification and collection of ‘abnormal pline has to address a ‘lineage of problems’ (Toulmin,
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