Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Winter Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, 4 January 1986, and at the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of Biology, University of Maryland, 26 April 1986. I am particularly grateful to David Bloor, Steven Shapin, Christopher Lawrence,Malcolm Nicolson, John T. Edsall, David Boucher and John Pickstone for their comments on earlier drafts.

¹ See Allen, Garland E., Life Science in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, 1978Google Scholar, chapter VI; Haraway, Donna J., Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology, New Haven, Conn., 1976.Google Scholar

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⁶ These later writers did not accept the particular metaphysical framework on which Haldane based his philosophy of organisms, and which is outlined in the following section of this paper. Nevertheless, in pioneering a theoretical alternative to both mechanism and dualistic vitalism, Haldane was the first to articulate the sophisticated version of scientific naturalism which they endorsed, and can more fruitfully be identified with their school of thought than with either of these previous positions. A useful discussion of the different varieties of organicism developed at this time is Phillips, D.C., ‘Organicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, Journal of the History of Ideas, (1970), 31, pp. 413–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁹ Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., ‘The relation of philosophy to science’, in Seth, Andrew (later Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison) and Haldane, R.B. (eds), Essays in Philosophical Criticism, London, 1883, pp. 41–66Google Scholar; Pringle-Pattison, A.S., ‘Richard Burdon Haldane (Viscount Haldane of Cloan) 1856–1928’, Proceedings of the British Academy, (1928), 14, pp. 405–441.Google Scholar

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¹¹ cf. Budd, Susan, ‘The loss of faith. Reasons for unbelief among members of the secular movement in England, 1850–1950’, Past and Present, (1967), 36, pp. 106–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁴ John Haldane resigned his Free Church membership in a letter to his minister, Ross, Hugh, dated 25 02 1883.Google Scholar A draft of this letter is held in the J.S. Haldane Papers, Woodward Biomedical Library, University of British Columbia. I am grateful to the Welcome Trust for a travel grant which enabled me to examine these and other papers in Canada. For further material on the idealists' crisis of faith, see Davie, George Elder, The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn, Edinburgh, 1964, p. 329Google Scholar; Drummond, Andrew L. and Bulloch, James, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland 1874–1900, Edinburgh, 1978, pp. 231–235Google Scholar; Wenley, R.M., ‘An unborn idealism’, in Adams, G.P. and Montague, W.P. (eds), Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal statements, 2 vols., London, 1930, II, pp. 385–411Google Scholar; Muirhead, John Henry, Reflections by a Journeyman in Philosophy, London, 1942, p. 32.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., op. cit. (9), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar Also Seth, Andrew, ‘Philosophy as criticism of categories’, in Seth and Haldane (eds), op. cit. (9), pp. 8–40.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., op. cit. (9), p. 61.Google Scholar For a reiteration of this position late in life, see Haldane, J.S., The Philosophy of a Biologist, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1936, p. 152.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., op. cit. (9), p. 57.Google Scholar cf. Muirhead, , op. cit. (14), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

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²¹ Such arguments clearly owed much to a broader liberal movement in theology which was gaining ground in Scotland in the wake of Essays and reviews, and brought with it the German Biblical criticism and a generally more naturalistic world view. See Campbell, , op. cit. (12), pp. 280–288Google Scholar; Drummond, and Bulloch, , op. cit. (14)Google Scholar, chapter V.

²² Haldane, , Religion and the Growth of Knowledge, op. cit. (13), p. 17.Google Scholar cf. Rowell, Geoffrey, Hell and the Victorians: A Study of the Nineteenth-Century Theological Controversies Concerning Eternal Punishment and the Future Life, Oxford, 1974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ Certain members of the Scottish school of Common Sense philosophy had previously shown inclinations towards German idealist thought, most notably J.F. Ferrier, who incorporated elements of Kantian and Hegelian thought into his metaphysics, and James Hutchison Stirling, whose obscure but influential book on The Secret of Hegel, being the Hegelian system in Origin, Principle, Form and Matter was published in 1865Google Scholar (2 vols, London). The latter author in particular owed much to the more general interest in German thought promoted by his friend, Thomas Carlyle. But while the Scottish idealists later chose to trace their intellectual lineage to this tradition, they diverged markedly from the Common Sense writers in the antiecclesiastical conclusions they drew from their philosophy.

²⁴ For a statement of the Oxford version of this view, see Bosanquet, Bernard, The Philosophical Theory of the State, London, 1899.Google Scholar

²⁵ Vincent, Andrew and Plant, Raymond, Philosophy, Politics and Citizenship: The Life and Thought of the British Idealists, Oxford, 1984.Google Scholar For a valuable overview of the political discourse within which these arguments were articulated, see Collini, Stefan, ‘Individualism and collectivism’, chapter I of his Liberalism and Sociology: L.T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in Britain 1880–1914, Cambridge, 1979.Google Scholar

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³¹ Haldane, J.S. to Trotter, L.K., 10 07 1891Google Scholar; letter in the possession of Naomi Mitchison.

³² Turner, F.M., Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late-Victorian England, New Haven, Conn., 1974Google Scholar, chapter I; Jacyna, L.S., ‘Scientific naturalism in Victorian Britain: An essay in the social history of ideas’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1980.Google Scholar

³³ According to James R. Moore, it was only more liberal theologians, chiefly in the university towns, who were perturbed by the mechanistic implications of Darwin's theory: Moore, , The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900, Cambridge, 1979CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim. See also Baxter, Paul, ‘Science and belief in Scotland, 1805–1868: The Scottish evangelicals’, unpublished Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, 1985Google Scholar; Drummond, A.L and Bulloch, J., The Church in Victorian Scotland, 1843–1874, Edinburgh, 1975Google Scholar, chapter VIII; Drummond, and Bullock, , op. cit. (14), pp. 18–28Google Scholar; Wenley, , op. cit. (14), pp. 389–398.Google Scholar

³⁴ Goodman, D.C., ‘Alexander Crum Brown’, D.S.B., ii, pp. 514–516, on p. 515.Google Scholar

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³⁷ Huxley, T.H., ‘On the physical basis of life’, (1868)Google Scholar, in Huxley, , Collected Essays, volume 1, Method and Results, London, 1893, pp. 130–165Google Scholar; Goodsir, Joseph, The Bases of Life: A Discourse in Reply to Professor Huxley's Lecture on ‘The Physical Basis of Life’, London, 1868Google Scholar; Stirling, James Hutchison, As Regards Protoplasm: in Relation to Professor Huxley's Essay on the Physical Basis of Life, Edinburgh, 1869.Google Scholar

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³⁹ Haldane, R.B. to Haldane, J.S., 19 01 1882Google Scholar, 28 Feb. 1882, letters in the possession of Naomi Mitchison.

⁴⁰ See, e.g., Haldane, J.S., ‘Vitalism’, Nineteenth Century, London, (1898), 44, pp. 400–413Google Scholar; Haldane, , op. cit. (38), p. 14.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Haldane, J.S., ‘Autobiographical notes’Google Scholar, (n.d.), National Library of Scotland, M/S 20235, f. 181.

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⁴³ Ibid., p. 54.

⁴⁴ Haldane, J.S., ‘Life and mechanism. Two lectures delivered at the Physiological Laboratory, Guy's Hospital, May 17 & 24, 1906’, Guy's Hospital Reports, (1906), 60, pp. 89–123, on p. 104.Google Scholar Haldane's conception of the category of teleology, and its apprehension in the biological world, drew heavily on Kant's arguments: see Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement (tr. Meredith, James Creed), Oxford, 1952Google Scholar, part II, ‘The critique of teleological judgement’. For a discussion of the profound impact which this Kantian notion had on German biology during the first half of the nineteenth century, see Lenoir, Timothy, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in 19th-century German Biology, Dordrecht, 1982.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., op. cit. (9), p. 59.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 54–55.

⁴⁷ Haldane, J.S., ‘Life and mechanism’, Mind, (1884), 9, pp. 27–47, on p. 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁴⁹ See, e.g., Haldane, J.S., The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 60.Google Scholar

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⁵⁴ It is interesting to note that, far from seeing scientific empiricism and religion as incompatible, Haldane recognized that ‘the association … of a mechanistic theory of life with orthodox theology’ was an important aspect of natural theological doctrine: Haldane, , The Philosophy of a Biologist, Oxford, 1935, p. 36.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Haldane, L.K., Friends and Kindred. Memoirs, London, 1961, p. 154Google Scholar; ‘Biology at the British Association’, Nature, (12 10 1893), 48, pp. 574–576.Google Scholar Two almost complete drafts of Haldane's book are held in File XIII of the J.S. Haldane Papers, Woodward Biomedical Library, University of British Columbia; it is not clear why the book was never published.

⁵⁶ Haldane, J.S. and Smith, J. Lorrain, ‘The physiological effects of air vitiated by respiration’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, (1893), 1, pp. 168–186, on p. 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶¹ In particular, this work formed the basis for his renewed attempts to spread his anti-mechanistic views among physiologists, for example in his talks at the Physiological Laboratory at Guy's Hospital; Haldane, , op. cit. (44).Google Scholar

⁶² See for example Haldane, J.S., ‘The axiom of biology’Google Scholar, chapter I in The Philosophical Basis of Biology, op. cit. (38)Google Scholar; Haldane, , op. cit. (44), pp. 100–104.Google Scholar

⁶³ Campbell, J.M.H., Douglas, C.G., Haldane, J.S. and Hobson, F.G., ‘The response of the respiratory centre to carbonic acid, oxygen, and hydrogen ion concentrations’, Journal of Physiology, (1913), 46, pp. 301–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haldane, J.S. and Priestley, J.G., ‘The regulation of excretion of water by the kidneys’, Journal of Physiology, (1916), 50, pp. 296–303CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Douglas, C.G. and Haldane, J.S., ‘The regulation of the general circulation rate in man’, Journal of Physiology, (1922), 56, pp. 69–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

⁶⁴ See for example: Haldane, J.S., ‘Some recent advances in the physiology of respiration, renal secretion, and circulation’, British Medical Journal, (1921), i, pp. 409–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haldane, , ‘Biological method illustrated’, chapter II in The Philosophical Basis of Biology, op. cit. (38).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ A good account of the literature is given in Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (58)Google Scholar, passim.; see also Allen, , op. cit. (7), pp. 394–397.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Head, Henry, ‘On the regulation of respiration. Part I. Experimental’, and ‘Part II. Theoretical’, Journal of Physiology, (1889), 10, pp. 1–70, 279–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁷ See, inter alia, Fearing, Franklin, Reflex Action. A Study in the History of Physiological Psychology, Baltimore, 1930, pp. 146–186Google Scholar; Lowry, Richard, ‘The reflex models in psychology: origins and evolution’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, (1970), 6, pp. 64–693.0.CO;2-3>CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Roger, ‘The background of physiological psychology in natural philosophy’, History of Science, (1973), 11, pp. 75–123CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Daston, Lorraine J., ‘British responses to psycho-physiology, 1860–1900’, Isis, (1978), 69, pp. 192–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶⁹ Haldane, , op. cit. (44), pp. 47, 118, 121.Google Scholar Sherrington was himself sympathetic to the concept of teleology, at least as a heuristic for guiding physiological research. Thus, when talking about his work on the scratch reflex, he acknowledged that ‘we here trench on a kind of teleology’: Sherrington, C.S., The Integrative Action of the Nervous System, New Haven, Conn., 2nd edn, 1947, pp. 236–238.Google Scholar Metaphysically, however, he dissented from Haldane's anti-mechanism, claiming that the perception of teleology is a psychological artifact, not an apprehension of reality, and animals (at least, decerebrate ones) are really only reflex automata: Sherrington, , Man on his Nature: The Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, 1937–1938, Cambridge, 2nd edn, 1951, p. 182.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Indeed, Haldane's functional understanding of physiological phenomena suggested substantive objections to Head's claim to have identified a regulatory reflex mechanism. By slowing down any increase in breathing rate, the reflex inhibition described by Head as ‘vagus apnoea’ would actually lead to a reduction of ventilation just when oxygen was most needed by an organism. As Haldane later observed, ‘from the teleological point of view the existence of vagus apnoea seems extremely improbable. Nothing is more unlikely than that the amount of air breathed should be regulated by nervous impulses acting directly contrary to physiological requirements.’ See Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (57), p. 259Google Scholar; also Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (58), p. 15.Google Scholar

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⁷⁴ Haldane himself repeatedly stressed the importance of his anti-mechanistic commitment in determining the direction of his research programme. See for example Haldane, , op. cit. (20), London, 1932, pp. 35–36Google Scholar; Haldane, , The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 86Google Scholar; Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (58), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Thus, Pnina Abir-Am recalls the opinion of the historian of biochemistry, Edsall, John T.: ‘in his experimental work as a physiologist, Haldane was a mechanist though he opposed mechanism in his philosophically oriented writings’.Google Scholar Cited in Abir-Am, , ‘Recasting the disciplinary order in science: A deconstruction of rhetoric on “biology and physics” at two international congresses in 1931’, Humanity and Society, (1985), 9, pp. 388–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on p. 420 n. 29.

⁷⁶ Most recently Nils Roll-Hansen has presented a version of this argument, suggesting that the only real difference between holists and mechanists is that the former set limits to biological inquiry and explanation which are not required by the latter: Roll-Hansen, , ‘E.S. Russell and J.H. Woodger: The failure of two twentieth-century opponents of mechanistic biology’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1984), 17, pp. 399–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roll-Hansen, , ‘Critical teleology. Immanuel Kant and Claude Bernard on the limitations of experimental biology’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1976), 9, pp. 59–91.Google Scholar

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⁷⁹ Haldane laid claim to familiar rhetoric when he argued that scientific progress had been retarded by the adoption, not only of dualistic vitalism, but also of dogmatic mechanism: see for example Haldane, , op. cit. (44), p. 92Google Scholar; and Haldane, , op. cit. (38), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar This view was endorsed in two influential histories of science of that time: Singer, Charles Joseph, A Short History of Biology: A General Introduction to the Study of Living Things, Oxford, 1931Google Scholar, chapter XI; Nordenskiöld, Erik, The History of Biology: A Survey (tr. Eyre, L.B.), London, 1929, pp. 603–612.Google Scholar M.Y. Johari has documented the sympathetic reception of Haldane, 's writings in an M.Sc. thesis on ‘The impact of social and philosophical crisis upon scientific knowledge: The case of British biologists on mechanist—vitualist debate at the beginning of the twentieth century and the First World War’, (University of Manchester, 1979)Google Scholar, chapter II, ‘The mechanist—vitalist debate and John Scott Haldane’. For a contemporary assessment of Haldane's place in the wider organicist movement, see McDougall, William, ‘The philosophy of J.S. Haldane’, Philosophy, (1936), 11, pp. 419–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸⁰ From accounts of similar cases of the reinterpretation of experimental results, Hilde Hein has argued that conflicts between mechanists and anti-mechanists cannot in principle be decided one way or another by scientific evidence. Individual scientists' preferences must be explained, according to Hein, in terms of wider philosophical and social commitments: Hein, , ‘The endurance of the mechanism—vitalism controversy’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1972), 5, 159–188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Donna Haraway endorses Hein's view of mechanism and vitalism in her discussion of early twentieth-century embryology: op. cit. (1), pp. 193–206.

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⁸² Haldane himself argued that his work differed from that of the mechanists, not in the methodologies he employed in the laboratory, but in the questions he asked: Haldane, , op. cit. (60), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar His claims are born out by recent studies of mid-nineteenth-century German mechanists and vitalists, which failed to discover any divergence of methodology: Benton, E., ‘Vitalism in nineteenth-century scientific thought: a typology and reassessment’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, (1974–1975), 5, pp. 17–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Mendelsohn, Everett, ‘Physical models and physiological concepts: explanations in nineteenth century biology’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1965), 2, pp. 201–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Elsewhere, however, I have argued that Haldane's methodology did in fact differ from that of many of his professedly mechanistic contemporaries, notably in his use of unviolated subjects, chiefly humans, rather than vivisectioned animal subjects. Moreover, in a somewhat different debate over oxygen secretion, when participants on both sides recognized that the outcome of that debate would have implications for the controversy over mechanistic biology, the adequacy of Haldane's physiological methods was explicitly called into question. For a fuller discussion of this debate, see Sturdy, , op. cit. (5), pp. 216–241.Google Scholar

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⁸⁴ Jones, Henry, ‘The social organism’, in Seth and Haldane (eds), op. cit. (19), pp. 187–213.Google Scholar

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⁸⁹ Haldane, J.B.S., op. cit. (5), p. 32Google Scholar; Markham, Violet Rosa, Friendship's Harvest, London, 1936.Google Scholar Another mining friend and Liberal activist was Sir Richard Redmayne, H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines: see his Men, Mines and Memories, London, 1942.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ As Freeden put it in his study of the New Liberalism, ‘For liberals, … socialism pertained first to the ethical and only then to the economic sphere … an intellectual and moral revolution had to precede a social and industrial one.’ Freeden, , op. cit. (28), p. 28.Google Scholar

⁹¹ This phrase is coined by Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society, Oxford, 1971, p. 7.Google Scholar See also Vincent, and Plant, , op. cit. (25), pp. 31–33, 83–87.Google Scholar

⁹² Haldane, J.B.S., ‘Materialism and its opponents’, in A Banned Broadcast and Other Essays, London, 1946, pp. 253–258, on p. 258.Google Scholar

⁹³ Haldane, J.S., Russell, E.S. and MacKenzie, Leslie, ‘Symposium: The relations between biology and psychology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (1923)Google Scholar, Supplement 3. Relativity, Logic and Mysticism, pp. 56–94Google Scholar, on pp. 66–67; cf. Haldane, , The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 251.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Haldane, J.S., ‘The risks attending the use of carburetted water-gas for domestic lighting purposes’, Public Health, (1900), 12, pp. 490–509, on p. 505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹⁵ This was essentially the same stance as his brother had taken on negotiations over the eight-hour day for miners, some forty-six years previously: Haldane, R.B., ‘The eight hours question’, Contemporary Review, (1980), 57, pp. 240–255.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Haldane, J.S., ‘Values in industry’Google Scholar, in Haldane, , op. cit. (20), pp. 187–207, on pp. 191–192.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Haldane, , op. cit. (54), pp. 127–128.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Haldane, J.S., ‘Lung irritant gas poisoning and its sequelae’, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, (1919), 33, pp. 494–507Google Scholar, on pp. 502–507. See also Haldane, J.S. to Douglas, C.G., 21 03 1918Google Scholar, letter in the possession of Dr D.J.C. Cunningham.

⁹⁹ Miller, Jonathan, ‘The dog beneath the skin’, The Listener, (20 07 1972), 88, pp. 74–76.Google Scholar cf. Geison, Gerald L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society, Princeton, N.J., 1978, pp. 338–355.Google Scholar For an earlier but comparable metaphorical use of the nervous system, see Lawrence, Christopher J., ‘The nervous system and society in the Scottish Enlightenment’, in Barnes and Shapin (eds), op. cit. (3), pp. 19–40.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ While at Oxford, Hobhouse went to Haldane for special tuition in biology ‘for the sake of philosophy’: Haldane, J.S. to Haldane, M.E., [autumn 1888]Google Scholar, letter in the possession of Naomi Mitchison. Hobhouse shared Haldane's concern to refute Spencer's social theories, and presumably his biological views as well. Hobhouse subsequently diverged considerably from the philosophical position which Haldane maintained: see Haldane, J.S., Thompson, D'Arcy W., Mitchell, P. Chalmers and Hobhouse, L.T., ‘Symposium: Are physical, biological and psychological categories irreducible?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (1917–1918), 18, pp. 419–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰¹ Hobson, J.A., ‘The re-statement of democracy’, Contemporary Review, (1902), 81, pp. 262–272.Google Scholar

¹⁰² MacDiarmid, Hugh, ‘Third Hymn to Lenin’, in MacDiarmid, Selected Poems, Craig, David and Manson, John (eds), Harmondsworth, 1970, pp. 102–111Google Scholar, on pp. 108–109. I am grateful to Malcolm Nicolson for showing me this quotation.