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William Bateson and the Science of Form

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William Bateson and the Science of Form WILLIAM BATESON AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM GERRY WEBSTER “If law is anywhere, it is everywhere.” E. B. TYLOR(1871) THEmost important, and the most difficult, task faced by any would-be science is that of delimiting a domain of phenomena which will form the specific object of that sci- ence, for a science is not determined by some a priori method but by the specific nature of its object. It is nec- essary to discover what is relevant and what is ir- relevant and to find the appropriate and specific concepts in terms of which the phenomena may be classified, de- scribed, and, explained. These tasks are not independent, for explanation and description are relative to each other and the development of a science involves an ongoing histo- rical dialectic between taxonomic and explanatory concepts. The goal of any science is the identification and definition of the natural kinds of causally active things (particulars) that exist within a specific domain and the discovery and explanation of what they do and how they act.’ Materials for the Study of Variation is concerned with the science, more exactly the possibility of a science, of bio- logical form. Bateson’s title, perhaps unintentionally, is a nice conceit, since the “materials” discussed are of two kinds. The bulk of the book is “an imaginary catalogue of a Mu- seum” of forms (p. 83), but the most significant parts of the book, the introductory sections, and the comments in- terspersed in the “catalogue” are concerned with materials of a different sort: the materials for thought, concepts for the study of form. In these sections he presents a critique of received morphological concepts. As he ruefully notes, such a critique is required even with respect to the earliest phases of morphological investigation, since, in our fallen xxx WILLIAM BATESON AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM state, we cannot avoid the “taint of theory” even in the ini- tial description of forms (p. vii). The enterprise of constructing a science of biological form is certainly far from completion at present. Indeed, it is arguable that it is still in the earliest stages. In this respect, Materials is not of historical interest only, for the fundamental conceptual issues relating to classification, de- scription, and explanation which Bateson addresses are still not completely resolved. Even more important, perhaps, is the fact that Bateson discusses these questions in terms of a critique of Darwinian concepts of morphology, since, from the perspective of Darwinian theory, the enterprise of constructing a science of biological form is one whose very possibility, let alone completion, might be regarded as question- able at a fundamental level. To put the matter briefly and schematically. The forms we are concerned with are the morphologies of individual organisms, and the possibility of a general science of form presupposes that these individual organisms (considered as forms) are members of natural kinds. Now, traditionally and conventionally in biology, the “sig- nificant” kinds, of which individual organisms are members, are taxonomic kinds, species (and higher) taxa, and these kinds are recognized empirically, in terms of morphology. It is not un- reasonable, therefore, to suppose, at least initially, that taxo- nomic kinds are the appropriate natural kinds in relation to a science of form. Bateson is aware of the significance of kinds in this sense, as is shown by his reference in the first sentence of the Preface to the “problem of Species” (p. v) and even more, perhaps, by his choice of 1 Cor. 15:39 as an epigraph to the Introduction (p. 1). Now, these presuppositions appear to be called into question by the Darwinian theory of evolution which, on some interpretations, has been thought to entail the total rejection of the notion of individual organisms as being members of natural kinds, insofar as these kinds are identified with species (or other) taxa. On this view species taxa are historical entities; ontologically they are individuals, not kinds. The individual organisms which are “parts” of these “species individuals” are effectively “sediments” of history and hence properly explained in terms of historical narrative rather than scientific law. For some, therefore, the specificity of biology is regarded as being grounded in the historical nature of its objects. Mayr expresses a view of the nature of organisms which is consistent with this position in the course of an ar- gument to the effect that biology “requires concepts that have no analog in the physical sciences . [because] organisms con- tain a historically evolved genetic program in which the results of 3 billion years of natural selection are incorporated.”* The question of the ontological status of species taxa and the ex- WILLIAM BATESON AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM xxxi planatory role of historical narrative in biology is .by no means an issue of merely historical interest but is very much a live, contemporary debate.S A convenient point of entry into the matters with which Bateson concerns himself is provided in the title of the book: the study of variation. In a broad sense, the problem of var- iation is effectively coterminous with the problem of form con- ceived in empirical terms, since the forms of organisms are, superficially at any rate, extraordinarily variable and diverse. However, biologists have traditionally refused to regard this di- versity as either irreducible or totally contingent and have at- tempted, with a measure of success, to systematically identify and classify the diverse empirical forms. From this perspec- tive, the goal of traditional, pre-Darwinian comparative anatomy and embryology is rationally reconstructed by Driesch: The old morphology had sought by means of anatomy and embryology to establish the laws, if any, which actually controlled morphological phenomena. It sought, in fact, to discover what morphogenesis really was. It sought, moreover, to construct what was typical in the varieties of forms, into a system which should be not merely histori- cally determined, but which should be intelligible from a higher and more rational ~tandpoint.~ As reconstructed by Driesch, Rational Morphology ad- dresses two distinct but related problems. These seem to cor- respond approximately to the two basic tasks of any science as characterized by Bhaskar (see note 1): the explanatory and the taxonomic. According to Driesch, the first problem is an explanatory or causal problem: how to establish the link be- tween the General and the Particular, the (empirically) typical and the individual. The “laws” Driesch refers to are those governing the process “by which the type is realised for the time being in the individual”-this is what morphogenesis really is-or, “those governing how it [the type1 changes its specificity, if such a change, i.e., a descent, is . assumed.”j The second problem is a systematic problem. Is it possible to discover or construct an “intelligible” or “rational” system of forms? By this Driesch seems to mean an attempt to dis- cover a form of law or necessity in the system which provides its raison d’Ctre. That is, to see to what extent, if at all, the purely empirical classification can be theoretically elucidated in such a way that it, or some aspects of it, have a formal struc- ture, analogous to that of a logical system, so that the diverse forms, or better, laws, can themselves be intelligibly related in terms of some kind of law. On this basis we might be able to say either that there cannot exist more than a certain num- ber of diverse forms or that there can be an indefinite number xxxii WILLIAM BATESON AND THE SCIENCE OF FORM which follow a definite law with regard to their differences. In either case, we have a closed set.6 The question of whether there are constraints on what forms can exist or whether, in the Darwinist view, “everything is possible,” is one of Bate- son’s central concerns. The concept of the “typical” employed here is no more than a concept of empirical regularities in morphologies, albeit rather complex regularities-sequences of forms or “life cy- cles.” We compare individual forms in order to determine regularities and thereby subsume the diverse individuals un- der empirical concepts of natural kinds of things: Fritillaria meleagris, Fritillaria, Liliaceae; Canis lupus, Canis, Canidae, etc. Thus, this “classificatory preparation for the knowledge of . the rational in the forms of nat~re”~represents, from a realist perspective, the first, the Human, stage which occurs in the development of any science, that is, the descriptive character- ization of distinct kinds in terms of empirical regularities or ‘‘proto-laws.”s It is only on this basis that we can, in the first instance, suppose that there is something to be scientifically explained. Now, in nearly all sciences, a taxonomic enterprise of this typological kind, since it is merely empirical, generates an un- classifiable residue: the irregular, the atypical, the abnormal, the monstrous. If this empirically unclassifiable, apparently “unlawful,” residue is small in magnitude, it tends to be ig- nored. However, if the irregularity is of such magnitude that it cannot be ignored, a typical solution is to multiply kinds. Since this multiplication process can, in principle, continue un- til there are as many kinds as there are individuals, it is con- ceivable that, at some point well before this logical terminus, the whole classificatory enterprise might be thought to be called into question; perhaps there are no kinds in nature, therefore no “laws of form,” but merely unique individuals, each a law unto itself. Such a conclusion is likely to be drawn by those who subscribe to an empiricist philosophy of science in which causal laws are equated with empirical regularities and natural systems are regarded as closed.
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