Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T23:51:02.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Epistemic Styles in German and American Embryology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Jane Maienschein
Jane Maienschein
Affiliation:
Department of PhilosophyArizona State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper argues that different epistemic styles exist in science, and that these make up an important unit of analysis for studying science. On occasion these different sets of commitments to ways of doing and knowing about the world may fall along national boundaries. The case presented here examines German and American embryology around 1900 and shows that differences in goals and approaches make up different epistemic styles.

In particular, the Germans sought causal mechanical explanations of as many phenomena as possible, guided by strong theories which achieved confirmation when they fit with as much of the available data as possible. The Americans, in contrast, sought definitive facts, as many as possible, which might be quite specific or narrowly based. These facts could lead to empirical generalizations which, in turn, could guide the generation of new knowledge in the form of new facts. Thus, the two epistemic styles emphasized different goals, processes of investigation, and standards of evidence.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1991 , pp. 407 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bradbury, S. 1968. The Microscope Past and Present. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Bracegirdle, Brian. 1978. A History of Microtechnique. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Chamberlin, T. C. 1890. “The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses.” Science 15:92–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Churchill, Frederick. 1973. “Chabry, Roux and the Experimental Method in Nineteenth-Century Embryology.” In Foundations of Scientific Method: The Nineteenth Century, edited by Giere, Ronald and Westfall, Richard S., 161–205. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Driesch, Hans. 1891–1892. “Entwicklungsmechanische Studien. I. Der Werth der beiden ersten Furchungszellen in der Echinodermentwicklung. Experimentelle Erzeugen von Theil- und Doppelbildung.” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie 53: 160–78.Google Scholar
Harwood, Jonathan. 1987. “National Styles in Science: Genetics in Germany and the United States between the Wars.” Isis 78:390–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertwig, Oscar. [1900] 1977. The Biological Problem of Today, translated by Mitchell, P. Chalmers. N.J. Oceanside,: Dabor Science Publications. Originally published as Zeit- und Streitfragen der Biologie, vol. 1.Google Scholar
His, Wilhelm. 1874. Unsere Körperform und das physiologische Problem ihrer Entstehung. Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel.Google Scholar
Holton, Gerald. 1978. The Scientific Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Laudan, Larry. 1981. “A Problem-Solving Approach to Scientific Progress.” In Scientific Revolutions, edited by Hacking, Ian, 144–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Maienschein, Jane. 1987. Arguments for Experimentation in Biology.” Philosophy of Science Association 1986 2:180–92.Google Scholar
“National Traits in Science.” 1883. Science 2:455–57.Google Scholar
Roux, Wilhelm. 1883. Über die Bedeutung der Kerntheilungsfiguren. Eine hypothetische Erörterung. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.Google Scholar
Roux, Wilhelm. 1888. “Beiträge zur Entwickelungsmechanik des Embryo. Über die künstliche Hervorbringung halber Embryonen durch Zerstörung einer der beiden ersten Furchungskugeln, sowie über die Nachentwickelung (Postgeneration) der fehlenden Körperhälfte.” Virchows Archiv für pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie und klinische Medezin 114:113–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roux, Wilhelm. [1894] 1986. “The Problems, Methods, and Scope of Developmental Mechanics.” In Defining Biology. Lectures from the 1890s, edited by Jane Maienschein. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Written as the introductory essay for the first volume of his Archiv für Entwickelungsmechanik. That essay was translated by William Morton Wheeler, 1894 and published in Biological Lectures Delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory 1895, 149–90.Google Scholar
Roux, Wilhelm. 1912. Terminologie der Entwickelungsmechanik der Tiere und Pflanzen. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. Partly translated by Churchill in “Chabry, Roux, and the Experimental Method in Nineteenth-Century Embryology” (Churchill 1973, 171).Google Scholar
Weismann, August. 1889. Die Kontinuität des Keimplasms als Grundlage einer Theorie der Vererbung, translated in Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems, edited by Poulton, Edward B., Schpnland, Selman, and Shipley, Arthur, 161–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weismann, August. 1893. The Germ-Plasm, translated by Parker, W. Newton and Rönnfeldt, Harriet. New York: Scribners.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edmund Beecher. 1896. The Cell in Development and Inheritance. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Edmund Beecher. 1901. “Aims and Methods of Natural History.” Science 13:14–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed