Monism and Morphology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Ernst Haeckel’s monistic worldview and his interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution worked together to help him rule out any role for divine providence or any non-material mind, spirit, will, or purpose in the organic world. In his account of 1866, the impersonal, unpredictable, and purposeless external environment was what drove evolutionary change. By around the turn of the twentieth century, however, new theories of evolution, heredity, and embryology were challenging Haeckel’s, but Haeckel no longer responded with his earlier vigor. Younger monistically oriented evolutionary biologists had to take the lead in modernizing and defending the monistic interpretation and the external causes of evolution. Three of these younger biologists are discussed here: Haeckel’s student, the morphologist-turned-theoretician Richard Semon (1859–1918); Ludwig Plate (1862–1937), who took over Haeckel’s chair at the University of Jena and became an influential journal editor and commentator on new research on heredity and evolution; and Paul Kammerer (1880–1926), whose experimental evidence for the modifying power of the environment was hotly debated

The Spoiler: Paul Kammerer’s Fight for the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics

In scientific controversy, as in sports, there are winners and losers, but sometimes also spoilers—unheralded outsiders, who defy convention and change the terms, the style, and the outcome of the competition, even if they cannot win it themselves. In the fight over the inheritance of acquired characteristics in the 1910s and 1920s, Paul Kammerer was the spoiler. His dramatic experimental results and provocative arguments surprised the established stars of genetics and evolution and exposed their weaknesses, particularly their inability to agree on the nature and causes of variation or on a better explanation of Kammerer’s results than Kammerer’s own “Lamarckian” one

The Many Sides of Gregor Mendel

Far from being designed only for the ages, Mendel’s celebrated experiments on hybridization in peas addressed the interests of contemporary breeders, plant hybridizers, Mendel’s teachers in Vienna, brothers at the monastery, and colleagues at the Brünn Society. It was the work of a man with many sides, who belonged to many communities

The Mendelian and Non-Mendelian Origins of Genetics

Mendel's paper as part of a large body of nineteenth-century literature on practical plant- and animal breeding and experimental hybridization, which contained a confusing and contradictory assortment of observations on heredity, some in line with Mendel’s, but most not. After 1900, this literature was, in a sense, rediscovered along with Mendel, and it then played a dual role. For critics like W. F. R. Weldon, the non-Mendelian cases falsified Mendel’s laws. But for Mendel’s three co-rediscoverers, William Bateson, and others, they represented challenges to be met within a research program that would modify and extend Mendel’s system and establish a new scientific discipline

Ascent, Descent, and Divergence

In their pathbreaking discussions of the human family tree in the 1860s and 1870s, Ernst Haeckel and Charles Darwin had to account for both the ascent of the species and its diversification into races. But what were the cause and the pattern of diversification, and when did it begin? Did we attain a common humanity first, which all the races still share? Or did we split up as apes and have to find our own separate and perhaps not equivalent ways to become human? Using texts and images from their principal works, this paper recovers Haeckel’s and Darwin’s views on these points, relates them to the monogenist-polygenist debate, and compares them to Alfred Russel Wallace’s 1864 attempt at a compromise

Written to be Erased: Paper Rights and the Visibility of Migrant Domestic Workers

This chapter conceptualizes forms and processes of erasure and visibility of migrant domestic workers through the analysis of interview data, media coverage, and public policy. This chapter builds on the existing literature on foreign domestic labor by synthesizing a framework to better represent the mechanisms that produce instances of visibility and erasure; these include transnational forces of erasure like sexism, xenophobia, and domestic labor stigma that interact with country-specific policies and norms. Within this framework of visibility and erasure, we also delineate different aspects of each, such as spatial erasure, erasure in the media, and self-erasure. Finally, this chapter explores how each of these components interconnect into a system of erasure, each aspect enabling another aspect in dampening the individuality of migrant domestic workers. This chapter is intended to illuminate the realities of erasure with careful specificity, while still crediting domestic workers for their resilience and creativity in promoting their own visibility

On Nature and the Human

A major contribution of anthropological work has been to challenge a unitary theory of the human. In this American Anthropologist vital topics forum, a range of prominent anthropologists contribute to this challenge and provide musings on the human. The essays in this forum reflect diversity and unity of anthropological thought on human nature. Some note humans’ connection to other primates, and others emphasize our distinction from ancestral patterns. Several reflect on cultural change, globally and locally, while others problematize what we might mean by, and who we include in, a “human” nature. The perception of humans constructing and being constructed by the world and the warning to be cognizant of our approaches to defining ourselves are central themes here. Our goal is to initiate a discussion that might reshape, or at least influence, academic and public debates.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79283/1/j.1548-1433.2010.01271.x.pd

Combining theory and experiment for X-ray absorption spectroscopy and resonant X-ray scattering characterization of polymers

An improved understanding of fundamental chemistry, electronic structure, morphology, and dynamics in polymers and soft materials requires advanced characterization techniques that are amenable to in situ and operando studies. Soft X-ray methods are especially useful in their ability to non-destructively provide information on specific materials or chemical moieties. Analysis of these experiments, which can be very dependent on X-ray energy and polarization, can quickly become complex. Complementary modeling and predictive capabilities are required to properly probe these critical features. Here, we present relevant background on this emerging suite of techniques. We focus on how the combination of theory and experiment has been applied and can be further developed to drive our understanding of how these methods probe relevant chemistry, structure, and dynamics in soft materials

From Mendel’s discovery on pea to today’s plant genetics and breeding

In 2015, we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the presentation of the seminal work of Gregor Johann Mendel. While Darwin’s theory of evolution was based on differential survival and differential reproductive success, Mendel’s theory of heredity relies on equality and stability throughout all stages of the life cycle. Darwin’s concepts were continuous variation and “soft” heredity; Mendel espoused discontinuous variation and “hard” heredity. Thus, the combination of Mendelian genetics with Darwin’s theory of natural selection was the process that resulted in the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology. Although biology, genetics, and genomics have been revolutionized in recent years, modern genetics will forever rely on simple principles founded on pea breeding using seven single gene characters. Purposeful use of mutants to study gene function is one of the essential tools of modern genetics. Today, over 100 plant species genomes have been sequenced. Mapping populations and their use in segregation of molecular markers and marker–trait association to map and isolate genes, were developed on the basis of Mendel's work. Genome-wide or genomic selection is a recent approach for the development of improved breeding lines. The analysis of complex traits has been enhanced by high-throughput phenotyping and developments in statistical and modeling methods for the analysis of phenotypic data. Introgression of novel alleles from landraces and wild relatives widens genetic diversity and improves traits; transgenic methodologies allow for the introduction of novel genes from diverse sources, and gene editing approaches offer possibilities to manipulate gene in a precise manner