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Max Planck Institute for the History of Science the Hereditary Hourglass. Genetics and Epigenetics, 1868–2000

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Max Planck Institute for the History of Science the Hereditary Hourglass. Genetics and Epigenetics, 1868–2000 MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 2010 PREPRINT 392 Ana Barahona, Edna Suarez-Díaz, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, (eds.) The Hereditary Hourglass. Genetics and Epigenetics, 1868–2000 Contents Part I. A Broader Conception of Heredity Introduction The Hereditary Hourglass: Narrowing and Expanding the Domain of Heredity Ana Barahona, Edna Suárez, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger ……………………………………………………5 ‘Epigenesis’ in Epigenetics: Scientific Knowledge, Concepts, and Words Stefan Willer …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 13 William Keith Brooks (1848-1908) and the Defense of late-Nineteenth Century Darwinian Evolution Theory Keith R. Benson ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 23 Consanguinity, Heredity and Marriage The Path to Medical Intervention in Mexican Marriage Laws Fabricio González Soriano and Carlos López-Beltrán ……………………………………………………… 35 Ideas of Medical Doctors on Heredity in Mexico in the Late 19th Century Ana Barahona …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 47 Part II. The Restriction of Heredity: Cases in Genetics and Evolution Switches and Batteries: Two Models of Gene Regulation and a Note on the Historiography of 20th Century Biology Vivette García and Edna Suárez ……………………………………………………………………………… 59 The Metaphor of “Nuclear Reprogramming”: 1970’s Cloning Research and Beyond Christina Brandt ………………………………………………………………………………………………… 85 Science as Evolution of Technologies of Cognition Sergio F. Martínez ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 97 Won’t You Please Unite? Cultural Evolution and Kinds of Synthesis Maria E. Kronfeldner ……………………………………………………………………………………………111 Part III. The Public Perception of Heredity Between Genealogy, Degeneration and Reproduction: The Figure of the Bachelor in Science and Literature Ulrike Vedder ……………………………………………………………………………………………………129 Mutant, Hero or Monster? Genetics in Cinema Sophia Vackimes …………………………………………………………………………………………………137 Human Genetics in the Press: Three Lessons from a Case Study Matiana González-Silva ………………………………………………………………………………………149 Authors and Editors ……………………………………………………………………………………………159 Part I A Broader Conception of Heredity Introduction The Hereditary Hourglass: Narrowing and Expanding the Domain of Heredity1 Ana Barahona, Edna Suárez, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger 1. Historical and scientific metaphors Over the past four decades the study of the phenomena of heredity has caught the attention of historians, sociologists, and philosophers of the life sciences. Undoubtedly, this is reflected in the progress made to unravel the conditions under which the very idea of heredity came to fruition (Churchill 1987; López-Beltrán 2004; Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2007), as well as in the informed accounts of different practices, tools (be they conceptual or material), and institutions identified with this field of inquiry.2 The challenge for the student of science is the same as when confronting other scientific endeavors, namely, the question of how to deal with the continuous research on the particularities of cases and specific problems, while simultaneously seeking to produce a broader picture on the field of heredity, within which isolated events acquire new meanings.3 The questions students of science choose to ask may require both types of answers, the local account and a more extended context. To keep them balanced has been our goal in this project. In order to combine both strategies we adopted the image of the hourglass or sand clock as a metaphor for the shape of the changes that have taken place in the wide-ranging studies of heredity – and some of its implications for the study of evolution –, from the second half of the 19th century up to the present day. The image of the open extremes and the narrow neck seems appropriate to represent the transition between the rich approaches on heredity recognizing the role of the environment and epigenetic causes during the second half of the 19th century. Then came the narrow understanding 1 In 2007 the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico (UNAM) started a collaboration under the auspices of the Proalmex program, supported by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) and Conacyt (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología). Thanks to this project, four German scholars have realized research stays in the Mexico City campus of UNAM, mirrored by the research stays of four Mexican PhD students and four Mexican scholars between 2007 and 2008. As part of this project, we organized the Conference “The Hereditary Pendulum: Narrowing and Expanding the Domain of Heredity,” at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, UNAM, on October 1-2, 2008. Our collaboration has privileged inter- disciplinary approaches on genetics and epigenetics: cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and the history of science have contributed to a complex and proliferating view on this field. The present preprint is a result of the fruitful exchanges between participants of this project. 2 The number of studies in this field is enormous. Some of the most influential include general narratives like Dunn (1965), Bowler (1989) and Olby (1985). On tools and practices, see Fortun and Mendelsohn (1999), Kohler (1994), Gaudillière and Rheinberger (2004); on institutions, Harwood (1993), Gaudillière and Löwy (2001). 3 This problem has been addressed by a number of scholars, after the predominance of case-studies in the history of science since the mid-1980s. See, for instance, the special section on Isis (2005, volume 96) featuring articles by Kohler, Findlen, Kaiser and Shapin; or the efforts by John Pickstone to give an extended account on the “ways of knowing”, using the category of “working-practices” (2001). 5 Ana Barahona, Edna Suárez, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger of heredity around genes following the rise of the discipline of genetics at the turn of the 20th century. And, as the last century came to a close and the 21st century began, we witnessed a new widening of approaches searching for the causes of heredity, characterized by a broader preoccupation for development, evolution, the environment, and even culture. As we will see, however, the metaphor of the hourglass is – like all metaphors – just as good as the questions and problems it has helped open. Charles Darwin’s The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, serves well as a point of departure for this historical image. The context of hereditarian phenomena Darwin was confronted with was rich, if not messy regarding the study of what a century before was contained within the older question of generation. And the question of generation as posed in the 18th century did not have the historical connotation that the concept of heredity would acquire during the 19th century. During this time, as Ohad Parnes (2007) has shown, the same word, generation, began to be used to refer to “the act of organismal creation and for a group of individuals sharing nothing but a vaguely defined age” (p. 316). According to Parnes, the conceptualization of populations in terms of generations gave way to a new order of heredity. In this new order, the idea of “transmission” (of knowledge, education, biological traits, and diseases) conveyed temporal and spatial coherence to groups of individuals. Taking together this notion of generation, with the medical contexts in which the metaphor of heredity was imported from law and became biologically reified (López Beltrán 2004; 2007), we are faced with the radical cultural changes which resulted in a more historical view of organisms during the 19th century. It is in this context where the acquisition, transmission, and development of traits in organisms took on a new biological natural meaning. The recognition of different and heterogeneous causes of heredity in the latter part of the 19th century was replaced by a narrower view at the beginning of the 20th century, in parallel with the slow but firm recognition of Mendel’s laws, and giving way to what has been called the “century of the gene” (Fox Keller 2000). The emphasis on genes in classical genetics, which culminated in the molecular and informational gene associated with DNA, had a lasting effect on theories of heredity which also influenced the fields of evolution, taxonomy, and medicine. At the end of the 20th century, however, the interest in epigenetics, regulation, and complex bodily and environmental interactions has witnessed a remarkable increase. Nowadays it seems that the late 19th century concerns of anthropologists, developmental biologists, novelists, and psychologists could provide inspiration for the interpretation of some recent developments in the life sciences. Though we are using a metaphor that specifically focuses on the temporal dimension of science, metaphors have been notorious as cognitive resources in the understanding of hereditary phenomena at large. As already mentioned, the very notion of heredity was metaphorized when imported by medical doctors from the legal to the biological sphere. Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (2007) have argued that this metaphor, with its rich semantics, provided enough room for the creation of a particular epistemic space for the study of hereditary phenomena. This epistemic space depends “on a vast configuration of distributed technologies and institutions connected by a system of exchange: botanical gardens, hospitals, chemical and physiological laboratories, genealogical and statistical
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