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Sophie Vasset - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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« What is the best theory of generation? » : Argumentation et débats d’étudiants en médecine à La Société Royale de médecine d’Édimbourg au dix-huitième siècle
Revue de Synthèse, 2016Co-Authors: Sophie VassetAbstract:Quest’articolo propone una nuova prospettiva sulla diatriba a lungo termine sulla generazione, che divide ovisti, spermisti e partiggiani del epigenesi durante i lunghi 17esimo e 18esimo secoli in Europa. Invece di definire gli attori partendo dalle pubblicazioni di medici e naturalisti francesi, inglesi ed europei que contraddiscono le teorie ovisti o spermisti dei loro pari, cercerò di porre alcune domande in margine di questa diatriba : que cosa resta di una controversia quando questa sembra chiusa ? Come viene percepita una controversia da contemporani che hanno un accesso limitato a questa discussione ? Qual’è il ruolo delle polemiche scientifiche nel educazione dei medici ? Tratterò queste domande analizzando quattro dissertazioni scritte da studenti alla Royal Medical Society di Edimburgo nel 18esimo secolo. Cet article propose d’aborder différemment la longue querelle de la génération, qui divise les ovistes, les spermistes et les partisans de l’épigénèse tout au long des 17^e et 18^e en Europe. Plutôt que d’en définir les acteurs à partir des publiants, à savoir les médecins ou naturalistes français, anglais et européens qui contredisent les théories ovistes ou spermistes de leurs pairs, je chercherai à poser quelques questions en marge de cette querelle : que reste-t-il d’une querelle une fois qu’elle semble terminée ? Comment une querelle est-elle perçue par les contemporains qui auraient un accès fragmentaire à la querelle ? Quel est le rôle des querelles scientifiques dans l’éducation des médecins ? Je traiterai ces questions en analysant quatre dissertations rédigées par les étudiants en médecine de la Royal Medical Society d’Édimbourg au 18^e siècle. This article proposes a different approach to the long generation controversy that divided naturalists in eighteenth-century Europe between those in favour of Preformationism, on the one hand, and supporters of the theory of epigenesis on the other. This controversy has mostly been studied through the publications of the intellectual elite, that was constituted of medical doctors, natural historians, philosophers, and theologians. Rather than reviewing the ideas and antagonisms of the direct agents of the controversy, I will attempt to approach it from the margins. What is the legacy of a long-term controversy when it seems to be over? How was such an extended controversy perceived by contemporaries that would only have a fragmented access to quarrel? What is the role of scientific disputes in the education of doctors? I will address these questions by analyzing four essays written by medical students of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh.
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What is the best theory of generation? » : Argumentation et débats d’étudiants en médecine à La Société Royale de médecine d’Édimbourg au dix-huitième siècle
Revue de Synthèse, 2016Co-Authors: Sophie VassetAbstract:This article proposes a different approach to the long generation controversy that divided naturalists in eighteenth-century Europe between those in favour of Preformationism, on the one hand, and supporters of the theory of epigenesis on the other. This controversy has mostly been studied through the publications of the intellectual elite, that was constituted of medical doctors, natural historians, philosophers, and theologians. Rather than reviewing the ideas and antagonisms of the direct agents of the controversy, I will attempt to approach it from the margins. What is the legacy of a long-term controversy when it seems to be over? How was such an extended controversy perceived by contemporaries that would only have a fragmented access to quarrel? What is the role of scientific disputes in the education of doctors? I will address these questions by analyzing four essays written by medical students of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh.
Lenny Moss - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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from representational Preformationism to the epigenesis of openness to the world
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006Co-Authors: Lenny MossAbstract:Abstract: The problem of how to reconcile the apparent “purposiveness” of the living organism with nonteleological, mechanist modes of explanation was given a certain form through most of the 20th century by a relatively decontextualized understanding of the gene as the heritable determinant of phenotypic traits. As instrumentally preformationist presuppositions about genes give way to the burgeoning elucidation of cell and molecular mechanisms of epigenesis, basic questions about the nature of complex living systems and their evolutionary origins once again come into consideration. Some suggestions are offered for a vision of the genetically recontextualized organism.
Charles Wolfe - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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The organism as ontological go-between: Hybridity, boundaries and degrees of reality in its conceptual history
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2014Co-Authors: Charles WolfeAbstract:The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or Preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles – sometimes overt, sometimes masked – throughout the history of biology, and frequently in very normative ways, also shifting between the biological and the social. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and the 'theorization' of Life, but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated 'vitalism'. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the 'body' than to the 'molecule', is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, sometimes even as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious 'vitalist' ontology of extra-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. This paper does not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either in terms of scientific validity or historical coherence; nor does it return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to focus on the emergence and transformation of the concept of organism, but has not emphasized so much the way in which organism is a shifting, 'go-between' concept – invoked as 'natural' by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or an epistemic limit case, all of which partly overlap with the idea of 'nomadic concepts'. Thereby the concept of organism continues to function in different contexts – as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge,
Cécilia Bognon - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Between biology and chemistry in the Enlightenment: how nutrition shapes vital organization. Buffon, Bonnet, C.F. Wolff
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2019Co-Authors: Cécilia BognonAbstract:This paper seeks to characterize how the study of nutrition processes contributed to revisit the problem of vital organization in the late 18th century. It argues that focusing on nutrition leads to reformulate the problem of the relation between life and organization in terms of processes, rather than static or given structures. This nutrition-centered approach to life amounts to acknowledge the specific strategic role nutrition played in the development of a materialist approach to the generation of vital organization. The paper proposes a clarification of the multiple meanings of the concept of organization in the context of Enlightenment physiology and nascent biology, before focusing on the century long analogy between nutrition and generation. It shows how, by contrasting different uses of this analogy, nutrition was employed as a key vital phenomenon in the development of epigenetic theories of generation, i.e. how a nutritive modeling of generation was used in the undermining of Preformationism. To this purpose I contrast two seemingly opposite theories of generation, Buffon’s and Bonnet’s, and show that despite the obvious metaphysical discontent, their views of generation share a common mechanical conceptual frame in which nutrition is conflated with growth and repair. I then turn to the role nutrition played in the epigenetic conception of generation in C. F. Wolff’s embryology and analyze this rival understanding of nutrition as an organizing process.
Cécilia Bognon-küss - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Between biology and chemistry in the Enlightenment: how nutrition shapes vital organization. Buffon, Bonnet, C.F. Wolff
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2019Co-Authors: Cécilia Bognon-küssAbstract:This paper seeks to characterize how the study of nutrition processes contributed to revisit the problem of vital organization in the late eighteenth century. It argues that focusing on nutrition leads to reformulate the problem of the relation between life and organization in terms of processes, rather than static or given structures. This nutrition-centered approach to life amounts to acknowledge the specific strategic role nutrition played in the development of a materialist approach to the generation of vital organization. The paper proposes a clarification of the multiple meanings of the concept of organization in the context of Enlightenment physiology and nascent biology, before focusing on the century long analogy between nutrition and generation. It shows how, by contrasting different uses of this analogy, nutrition was employed as a key vital phenomenon in the development of epigenetic theories of generation, i.e. how a nutritive modeling of generation was used in the undermining of Preformationism. To this purpose I contrast two seemingly opposite theories of generation, Buffon’s and Bonnet’s, and show that despite the obvious metaphysical discontent, their views of generation share a common mechanical conceptual frame in which nutrition is conflated with growth and repair. I then turn to the role nutrition played in the epigenetic conception of generation in C. F. Wolff’s embryology and analyze this rival understanding of nutrition as an organizing process.