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The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance
No one in this century can speak with greater authority on the progress of ideas in biology than Ernst Mayr. And no book has ever established the life sciences so firmly in the mainstream of Western intellectual history as The Growth of Biological Thought . Ten years in preparation, this is a work of epic proportions, tracing the development of the major problems of biology from the earliest attempts to find order in the diversity of life to modern research into the mechanisms of gene transmission.
974 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Ernst W. Mayr
102 books165 followersFor the computer scientist, see Ernst Wilhelm Meyr
Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904 – February 3, 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.
Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the species problem. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for the concept of species. In his book Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others. When populations within a species become isolated by geography, feeding strategy, mate selection, or other means, they may start to differ from other populations through genetic drift and natural selection, and over time may evolve into new species. The most significant and rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated (as on islands).
His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to its introduction of (natural) history into science.
Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904 – February 3, 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.
Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the species problem. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for the concept of species. In his book Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others. When populations within a species become isolated by geography, feeding strategy, mate selection, or other means, they may start to differ from other populations through genetic drift and natural selection, and over time may evolve into new species. The most significant and rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated (as on islands).
His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to its introduction of (natural) history into science.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 4, 2015
This book is a conceptual history of evolutionary biology, divided into three parts, on the history of systematics, the history of evolutionary theory, and the history of genetics. The author was himself one of the founders of the modern "evolutionary synthesis", so his account is very authoritative.
He says in the introduction that he may be "accused" of writing a textbook of biology disguised as a history; in fact I did learn a great deal of biology I hadn't known previously from the book. It differs from other accounts of evolution I have read recently in putting the main emphasis on biology rather than geology and paleontology. It also gives a much more sympathetic account of Lamarck than any other account I have read.
I can't really say it is a well-written book; part of the great length is due to the fact that it is very repetitious, for example reminding the reader at least once every three or four pages that "essentialism" was bad for biology -- I felt like yelling, "I get it already!" It's also hard to tell who the book was written for; the author will dwell at length on concepts that any reasonably educated person would already know, and then refer without explanation to obscure theories and use terminology that only a specialist would know, especially with reference to contemporary work. Despite these problems, the book is well worth working through for the content and the insights; although it took me almost two weeks to read I was never tempted to give up on it.
The book was first published in 1982 and brings the story almost up to that date.
He says in the introduction that he may be "accused" of writing a textbook of biology disguised as a history; in fact I did learn a great deal of biology I hadn't known previously from the book. It differs from other accounts of evolution I have read recently in putting the main emphasis on biology rather than geology and paleontology. It also gives a much more sympathetic account of Lamarck than any other account I have read.
I can't really say it is a well-written book; part of the great length is due to the fact that it is very repetitious, for example reminding the reader at least once every three or four pages that "essentialism" was bad for biology -- I felt like yelling, "I get it already!" It's also hard to tell who the book was written for; the author will dwell at length on concepts that any reasonably educated person would already know, and then refer without explanation to obscure theories and use terminology that only a specialist would know, especially with reference to contemporary work. Despite these problems, the book is well worth working through for the content and the insights; although it took me almost two weeks to read I was never tempted to give up on it.
The book was first published in 1982 and brings the story almost up to that date.
December 23, 2022
Perhaps more so than in other fields, in the hard sciences for instance, the student of biology stands to profit from the history of scientific investigation. For the stunning successes in physics do have the trait of being so explanatorily satisfactory that they sweep away earlier, provisional accomplishments. As Thomas Kuhn aptly observes in his groundbreaking Structure of scientific revolutions, the apprentice scientist, during the normal phase at least, can get up to speed and become an effective contributor to the on-going development of his field if he contents himself with mastering the currently prevailing paradigms. For him, to pore over outdated volumes from bygone centuries would be otiose (whether such a cavalier attitude towards the past suffices to do original research that would deserve to be qualified as revolutionary is another matter altogether). Suffice it to say that the great majority of practicing physicists, chemists and mathematicians have no need to immerse themselves in philosophy and archival explorations into intellectual history, as Kuhn expressly recognizes. The situation is entirely different in the historical sciences, among which we could place biology. No doubt because living organisms are vastly more complicated and more poorly understood than typical textbook problems in physics and chemistry, the biologist can ill-afford to neglect the historical development of ideas in his field, which, after all, did not emerge from Kuhn’s prescientific stage until well into the nineteenth century, several decades later than chemistry under Lavoisier and hundreds of years later than the revolution in the seventeenth century that established classical mechanics as a mature science. Hence, the avid reader and learner, not only in the general public but also among those who propose to go into biology as professionals, can only be pleased when one of the great minds of the twentieth century sets down his authoritative thoughts on the history of biology, Ernst Mayr in the book presently under review, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance. Mayr himself made important contributions to evolutionary theory having to do with allopatric versus sympatric speciation back in the 1940’s, when the neo-Darwinian synthesis was just emerging, followed by a long career as a professor at Harvard University. Thus, he is well placed for such an intellectually demanding undertaking as writing this book.
When, after a few years, Mayr realized how massive the task he had assigned himself was, he wisely decided to limit his scope to questions centrally concerned with evolutionary biology; thus, there is nothing on cell biology, physiology, developmental biology, neurobiology, molecular biology and so forth to be found in this volume. Any one of these would deserve a monograph in it own right. But, what we have here is quite enough! Thus, Mayr is concerned with ultimate evolutionary causation as opposed to proximate, or functional, causations operating within the individual organism.
One thing that Mayr is pretty good at is clear elucidation of basic concepts. Let us point out that this matters in a field like biology; in physics or mathematics, many can get away with passing off the search for conceptual clarity to others because a strictly technical derivation stands for itself and can be evaluated on internal criteria (not to mention, conceived of in the first place), even if its author may be somewhat hazy on the precise meaning of such terms as the principle of least action, the equivalence principle, Mach’s principle, gauge symmetry, Bohr’s complementarity or other such leading theoretical ideas. Consider how much has been done with Feynman’s path integral or renormalization in quantum field theory, even though there is still today no rigorous understanding of them in mathematical terms at all. But in a soft science like biology, with practically speaking no formulae or equations to rely on, clear thinking is of the essence. Indeed, Mayr stresses that during his career, advances in understanding came more from the introduction of improved concepts than from novel discoveries, per se. All of the hoopla about memes, for instance, could have been avoided if one paid attention to the real meaning of Darwinian natural selection and how it differs from phenomena in which human judgment is involved (the spirit, or Geist). Chapter two outlines, after some methodological reflections, what are for Mayr the dominant concepts: inheritance, program, population, variation, emergence and the organismic. A few necessary technical terms like gamete, zygote, species, gene, chromosome and such are defined for the reader’s convenience in a glossary. On the whole, Mayr’s prose is quite accessible to the reasonably educated layman, without need for professional training. This reviewer appreciates Mayr’s terse, dictionary-like remarks on things like population thinking versus essentialism, the problem of teleology and special characteristics of living organisms (which distinguish them from objects of study in harder fields such as physics), including complexity and organization, chemical uniqueness, the importance of quality over quantity, uniqueness and variability, possession of a genetic program, hierarchical structure and, lastly, holism and various kind of reductionism and the role of historicity, narrative and philosophy in giving biology its place in the overall system of human thought. Chapter three rounds out the introductory material by delineating the changing intellectual milieu of biology since antiquity. The professional historian might not have much new to gather from this overview, perhaps, but it will come as welcome to the lay reader.
The heart of Mayr’s exposition is contained in three parts, on, respectively, the diversity of life, evolution and variation and its inheritance. The first part is not so much about diversity per se as about the problem it poses for classification and the history of attempts to solve it, going back to Aristotle, then forward to Linnaeus and Buffon and the heyday of systematics during the nineteenth century (Cuvier and his principle of subordination of characters), when, under the influence of natural theology, it was still believed that a proper hierarchical taxonomy could disclose the laws governing organismic design. With the proliferation of other experimental disciplines in biology and the rising preference for mechanism, interest in systematics declined in modern times. The maturation of paleontology and the comparatively recent advent of molecular biology, enabling sequencing of the genetic code, however, have revived some attention to taxonomy, because there is the promise that a true phylogeny could be achieved with the help of modern techniques and the rich historical data they provide. Mayr discusses the issues surrounding attempting groupings according to common ancestry. But the really intellectually interesting aspect of this part is Mayr’s treatment of microtaxonomy, i.e., resolving what the right concept of a species should be. Here, he devotes fuller attention to an analysis and critique of essentialism, in light of Darwin’s ideas, which provoked a revolution. Biologists now define a species in terms of a reproductively isolated population. Modern population thinking is simply incommensurable with the older type-based thinking, and the transition from one to the other involves a change in metaphysical conception.
Part two on evolution engages what is, to be sure, the principal subject from which one might hope to wrest a benefit from Mayr’s expertise. The opening section on the history of the subject from the pre-Socratics up to the modern era is, admittedly, a little disappointing and Mayr’s hypotheses about why an evolutionary point of view failed to gain a foothold do not seem to reflect a very deep appropriation of intellectual history. Mayr’s aversion to the medieval mindset, in particular, is so pronounced that he can scarcely do justice to the whole interval from Aristotle to the Enlightenment. Early medieval realism, for instance, cannot just be equated to what Mayr understands by essentialism, and Mayr simply does not possess the command of metaphysics needed to grasp what the controversy between realists and nominalists was all about. Most probably due to his atheism, he plainly lacks the intellectual flair it takes to excel at intellectual history, which involves entering imaginatively into the thought-worlds of people from cultures very different from one's own, dominated as it as by a sterile and dull materialism. Not until he reaches the latter half of the eighteenth century does Mayr manage to gain a secure footing, where he can be in his native element. His accounts of leading natural historians and geologists such as Buffon, Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Lamarck are very good. Perhaps the best section, though, is his very extensive treatment of the transition from Lamarck to Darwin, the influences on Darwin from Lyell and Malthus and Darwin’s evidence for evolution and common descent (in a chapter totaling some fifty pages). Also at a similarly high level is Mayr’s presentation of the causation of evolutionary change due to the hypothesized mechanism of natural selection, as one has the right to expect from a prominent evolutionary biologist. Here, the conceptual analysis is very clear. The final chapter in part two brings things up to date with the neo-Darwinian synthesis and post-synthesis developments. This, of course, is where Mayr himself made his mark. Valuable because it goes into issues that are still open for debate, such as the evolutionary significance of sex and sexual selection, group selection, modes of speciation, macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium.
The same generally high level of historical commentary and analysis continues in part three on variation and its inheritance. The groundwork has first to be laid with the Schwann-Schleiden cell theory and the discovery of the nucleus and its chromosomes, leading to the concomitant rise of the gene concept (which is important to follow and perhaps difficult for us contemporaries to appreciate, now that we know about the double-helix structure of DNA; but even for us the full understanding of what is comprehended under a gene is progressing, as a result of ongoing work on gene regulation, intron splicing and post-transcriptional processing by RNA—all of which fall outside the scope of Mayr’s account, though). The real subject of part three is Mendel’s forerunners and the issues they faced (soft or hard inheritance, blending of characters, pangenesis, Weismann’s theory of inheritance), Mendel himself and a full explanation of his epochal discoveries, the reasons for his neglect until his rediscovery and the flourishing of classical genetics in the first decades of the twentieth century and some scant coverage of more recent work.
The fairly extended epilogue, a concluding meditation on methodology and philosophy of science, does not strike this reviewer as having had a very happy issue. What is perhaps surprising, Mayr’s reflections scarcely go beyond commonplaces and he notably fails to apply what all he knows, either from his long and distinguished career as a researcher in the field or from his lifelong studies of the history of the subject of biology. One would have wished for some concrete case studies and lessons drawn from them. Nevertheless, we can give Mayr a pass on this, as the rest of the book is so compelling and, indeed, epic in its proportions, as the blurbs on the back cover claim. One will notice how much more mature and systematic Mayr’s grasp of his field is than, say, Maynard Smith and Szathmáry’s, whose magnum opus, The Major Transitions in Evolution, we just reviewed along with Mayr. All around, Mayr’s stimulating tome can be warmly recommended as a standard-setting model in the historiography of science.
When, after a few years, Mayr realized how massive the task he had assigned himself was, he wisely decided to limit his scope to questions centrally concerned with evolutionary biology; thus, there is nothing on cell biology, physiology, developmental biology, neurobiology, molecular biology and so forth to be found in this volume. Any one of these would deserve a monograph in it own right. But, what we have here is quite enough! Thus, Mayr is concerned with ultimate evolutionary causation as opposed to proximate, or functional, causations operating within the individual organism.
One thing that Mayr is pretty good at is clear elucidation of basic concepts. Let us point out that this matters in a field like biology; in physics or mathematics, many can get away with passing off the search for conceptual clarity to others because a strictly technical derivation stands for itself and can be evaluated on internal criteria (not to mention, conceived of in the first place), even if its author may be somewhat hazy on the precise meaning of such terms as the principle of least action, the equivalence principle, Mach’s principle, gauge symmetry, Bohr’s complementarity or other such leading theoretical ideas. Consider how much has been done with Feynman’s path integral or renormalization in quantum field theory, even though there is still today no rigorous understanding of them in mathematical terms at all. But in a soft science like biology, with practically speaking no formulae or equations to rely on, clear thinking is of the essence. Indeed, Mayr stresses that during his career, advances in understanding came more from the introduction of improved concepts than from novel discoveries, per se. All of the hoopla about memes, for instance, could have been avoided if one paid attention to the real meaning of Darwinian natural selection and how it differs from phenomena in which human judgment is involved (the spirit, or Geist). Chapter two outlines, after some methodological reflections, what are for Mayr the dominant concepts: inheritance, program, population, variation, emergence and the organismic. A few necessary technical terms like gamete, zygote, species, gene, chromosome and such are defined for the reader’s convenience in a glossary. On the whole, Mayr’s prose is quite accessible to the reasonably educated layman, without need for professional training. This reviewer appreciates Mayr’s terse, dictionary-like remarks on things like population thinking versus essentialism, the problem of teleology and special characteristics of living organisms (which distinguish them from objects of study in harder fields such as physics), including complexity and organization, chemical uniqueness, the importance of quality over quantity, uniqueness and variability, possession of a genetic program, hierarchical structure and, lastly, holism and various kind of reductionism and the role of historicity, narrative and philosophy in giving biology its place in the overall system of human thought. Chapter three rounds out the introductory material by delineating the changing intellectual milieu of biology since antiquity. The professional historian might not have much new to gather from this overview, perhaps, but it will come as welcome to the lay reader.
The heart of Mayr’s exposition is contained in three parts, on, respectively, the diversity of life, evolution and variation and its inheritance. The first part is not so much about diversity per se as about the problem it poses for classification and the history of attempts to solve it, going back to Aristotle, then forward to Linnaeus and Buffon and the heyday of systematics during the nineteenth century (Cuvier and his principle of subordination of characters), when, under the influence of natural theology, it was still believed that a proper hierarchical taxonomy could disclose the laws governing organismic design. With the proliferation of other experimental disciplines in biology and the rising preference for mechanism, interest in systematics declined in modern times. The maturation of paleontology and the comparatively recent advent of molecular biology, enabling sequencing of the genetic code, however, have revived some attention to taxonomy, because there is the promise that a true phylogeny could be achieved with the help of modern techniques and the rich historical data they provide. Mayr discusses the issues surrounding attempting groupings according to common ancestry. But the really intellectually interesting aspect of this part is Mayr’s treatment of microtaxonomy, i.e., resolving what the right concept of a species should be. Here, he devotes fuller attention to an analysis and critique of essentialism, in light of Darwin’s ideas, which provoked a revolution. Biologists now define a species in terms of a reproductively isolated population. Modern population thinking is simply incommensurable with the older type-based thinking, and the transition from one to the other involves a change in metaphysical conception.
Part two on evolution engages what is, to be sure, the principal subject from which one might hope to wrest a benefit from Mayr’s expertise. The opening section on the history of the subject from the pre-Socratics up to the modern era is, admittedly, a little disappointing and Mayr’s hypotheses about why an evolutionary point of view failed to gain a foothold do not seem to reflect a very deep appropriation of intellectual history. Mayr’s aversion to the medieval mindset, in particular, is so pronounced that he can scarcely do justice to the whole interval from Aristotle to the Enlightenment. Early medieval realism, for instance, cannot just be equated to what Mayr understands by essentialism, and Mayr simply does not possess the command of metaphysics needed to grasp what the controversy between realists and nominalists was all about. Most probably due to his atheism, he plainly lacks the intellectual flair it takes to excel at intellectual history, which involves entering imaginatively into the thought-worlds of people from cultures very different from one's own, dominated as it as by a sterile and dull materialism. Not until he reaches the latter half of the eighteenth century does Mayr manage to gain a secure footing, where he can be in his native element. His accounts of leading natural historians and geologists such as Buffon, Cuvier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Lamarck are very good. Perhaps the best section, though, is his very extensive treatment of the transition from Lamarck to Darwin, the influences on Darwin from Lyell and Malthus and Darwin’s evidence for evolution and common descent (in a chapter totaling some fifty pages). Also at a similarly high level is Mayr’s presentation of the causation of evolutionary change due to the hypothesized mechanism of natural selection, as one has the right to expect from a prominent evolutionary biologist. Here, the conceptual analysis is very clear. The final chapter in part two brings things up to date with the neo-Darwinian synthesis and post-synthesis developments. This, of course, is where Mayr himself made his mark. Valuable because it goes into issues that are still open for debate, such as the evolutionary significance of sex and sexual selection, group selection, modes of speciation, macroevolution and punctuated equilibrium.
The same generally high level of historical commentary and analysis continues in part three on variation and its inheritance. The groundwork has first to be laid with the Schwann-Schleiden cell theory and the discovery of the nucleus and its chromosomes, leading to the concomitant rise of the gene concept (which is important to follow and perhaps difficult for us contemporaries to appreciate, now that we know about the double-helix structure of DNA; but even for us the full understanding of what is comprehended under a gene is progressing, as a result of ongoing work on gene regulation, intron splicing and post-transcriptional processing by RNA—all of which fall outside the scope of Mayr’s account, though). The real subject of part three is Mendel’s forerunners and the issues they faced (soft or hard inheritance, blending of characters, pangenesis, Weismann’s theory of inheritance), Mendel himself and a full explanation of his epochal discoveries, the reasons for his neglect until his rediscovery and the flourishing of classical genetics in the first decades of the twentieth century and some scant coverage of more recent work.
The fairly extended epilogue, a concluding meditation on methodology and philosophy of science, does not strike this reviewer as having had a very happy issue. What is perhaps surprising, Mayr’s reflections scarcely go beyond commonplaces and he notably fails to apply what all he knows, either from his long and distinguished career as a researcher in the field or from his lifelong studies of the history of the subject of biology. One would have wished for some concrete case studies and lessons drawn from them. Nevertheless, we can give Mayr a pass on this, as the rest of the book is so compelling and, indeed, epic in its proportions, as the blurbs on the back cover claim. One will notice how much more mature and systematic Mayr’s grasp of his field is than, say, Maynard Smith and Szathmáry’s, whose magnum opus, The Major Transitions in Evolution, we just reviewed along with Mayr. All around, Mayr’s stimulating tome can be warmly recommended as a standard-setting model in the historiography of science.
August 16, 2014
A historical context is often required for a complete understanding of scientific controversies within a field. In the discipline of biology, such a book did not exist until Ernst Mayr wrote The Growth of Biological Thought; Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. This book attempts to fill this gap in the literature and provide a history of ideas of biology. Prior studies in the history of biology focused on lives on biologists' and discoveries, yet they did not analyze the major concepts, ideas, and problems of biology as a whole. Therefore, Mayr's intent is to fill the lacuna and write a development of the history of ideas in biology, with a focus on diversity, evolution, and inheritance. This paper will first, describe Mayr's book and its major topics, and then, provide my own comments and analysis of the entire book.
Mayr structured the book into four topical sections. The first section described various topics including how to write biological history, what biology is and how it fits into general science, and a brief overview segmenting the periods of biology throughout history. This section was helpful in my understanding of the direction of biology from the Greeks in antiquity to the twentieth century. His discussion of various recurring schools of thought, such as essentialism and population thinking, provided a good basis for my understanding of the rest of the book.
Though I found this to be one of the more interesting sections of the book, I was surprised and perhaps puzzled over two of his statements. The first was that Mayr wanted to deny the application of Kuhnian revolution to biology. Mayr claimed that incompatible paradigms can coexist in biology for the same period. Another example is the nonconformation of systematics to Kuhn's concept of the progress of science. I do not think that Kuhn believed in a sudden paradigm shift; but as Bernard Cohen said, it is an "accumulation of such contradictory facts that eventually may death knell of a (scientific) theory...and lead to what T.S. Kuhn has called the replacement of one paradigm by another." Therefore, Cohen's description of Kuhn is adaptable to biology.
The second statement, which I found to be puzzling, was Mayr's vehement soapbox speech against the physicists and their alleged downgrading of biological science. Mayr returns to this point numerous times throughout the book, and it seemed that he was as biased against mathematics and physical science as he claimed the physical scientists were towards biology. I disagree that "mathematics is to science as grammar is to language." Grammar is a passive structure which does not influence the thought of the writer. Mathematics is an active vehicle of thought that not only conveys and describes phenomena but can be used as a tool of inquiry.
The second section focused on the diversity of organic life and described the taxonomic problems of classifying the species. The two main fields of this science are macrotaxonomy, which is the methods by which organisms are classified, and microtaxonomy which is concerned with delimiting and recognizing species. Previous to this reading, I was unaware of the importance of taxonomy and diversity within biology. I took for granted the individuality of all creatures and yet never considered the paradox of classifying and grouping individuals into species.
The third section, which received the most attention, dealt with the idea of evolution as it progressed from the ancients to modern thought, with obvious emphasis placed on Charles Darwin. Mayr described all evolutionary theories and I found the various number of ideas associated with evolution in the 50-year time span from Lamarck to Darwin very interesting. Mayr's presentation of Darwinism was the most lucid explanation I have ever read. I particularly liked the breakdown of Darwin's theory into five facts and three inferences for the description of the logic of the theory of natural selection.
A comparison of this section to Michael Ruse's The Darwinian Revolution results in the overshadowing of Ruse by Mayr's more thorough, expert, and comprehensive treatment. For example, Ruse's background to evolution began with Lamarck, while Mayr returns to antiquity. Ruse's treatment of the post-Origin of Species period neglected the resistance to natural selection, simply stating that most scientists were converted by 1875, while Mayr lists and describes ten reasons for the resistance of natural selection.
The final section of the book discussed variation and inheritance consisting of genetic theories from antiquity to 1980, yet the key period dates from Mendel's genetic work. This was a period which ignored and rediscovered Mendel, saw the emergence and rapid growth of modern genetics, and discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. This was my first in-depth study of this field of biology, other than a cursory examination of Mendel, Morgan, and the double helix structure of DNA. What I considered most surprising in this section (and also in the entire book) was Mayr's claim, "There has hardly been a more decisive breakthrough in the whole history of biology than the discovery of the double helix." This information allows scientists to explain the nature of the linear sequence of genes, describes the mechanism for replication, and explains the nature of mutations in chemical terms just to list a few of the double helix advances.
It is my opinion that Mayr wrote an excellent book which accomplished its intent of providing a history of biological ideas. The structure was clear due to his ample use of descriptive chapter and topic titles. I also thought that the title of the book clearly stated that there would be three global ideas that Mayr would trace throughout history--diversity, evolution, and inheritance. My only problem with the content of the book was that Mayr expected the reader to comprehend a broad, detailed range of general biology, particularly in his discussions of the current state of the science. At times I thought that the ideas addressed were not described, so much as they were discussed.
Two other problems that I encountered with the book were the glossary and footnotes. At first, I thought the glossary would be a valuable aid in reading the book, but I was mistaken. He claims to present over 20,000 pieces of information throughout his book. Yet, the glossary only provides 81 definitions; and, seemingly, never the ones that I looked up. For example, he includes a definition for soft inheritance, yet he fails to include an entry for hard inheritance. The other problem I had was with his notation scheme which was adapted from the social sciences (name and year). While he does list some page numbers in his reference section, I would have preferred the standard, historical notation system.
Mayr includes much of his own research into this book because he must believe that it is pertinent to the overall history of ideas in biology. My question is, Is Mayr biased towards the importance of his own work? A glance at the index under the name Mayr reveals 29 references to his own work. The only other individuals with that number of references are Darwin, Lamarck, and Mendel. I also disliked that at times he would refer to himself both in the third person and the first person. This brought an unnecessary confusion to the book.
My greatest criticism (and this is merely a personal judgment based on my own sense of values) was that Mayr's treatment of the subject was very depressing from a spiritual point of view. This took me completely by surprise because of my extreme lack of spiritual definition (if I had to chose a label I would call myself agnostic). Nevertheless, I feel that nature, evolution, and philosophy are areas of inspiration. The description of the origin of life does not, and I think should not, read like the recitation of a geometric proof. Mayr took great steps to avoid any form of anthropocentrism, going so far as to say that animals had a certain culture, albeit exponentially less than man's. This seems like Mayr is confused between animal instinct and human culture--two very different aspects of life.
Mayr structured the book into four topical sections. The first section described various topics including how to write biological history, what biology is and how it fits into general science, and a brief overview segmenting the periods of biology throughout history. This section was helpful in my understanding of the direction of biology from the Greeks in antiquity to the twentieth century. His discussion of various recurring schools of thought, such as essentialism and population thinking, provided a good basis for my understanding of the rest of the book.
Though I found this to be one of the more interesting sections of the book, I was surprised and perhaps puzzled over two of his statements. The first was that Mayr wanted to deny the application of Kuhnian revolution to biology. Mayr claimed that incompatible paradigms can coexist in biology for the same period. Another example is the nonconformation of systematics to Kuhn's concept of the progress of science. I do not think that Kuhn believed in a sudden paradigm shift; but as Bernard Cohen said, it is an "accumulation of such contradictory facts that eventually may death knell of a (scientific) theory...and lead to what T.S. Kuhn has called the replacement of one paradigm by another." Therefore, Cohen's description of Kuhn is adaptable to biology.
The second statement, which I found to be puzzling, was Mayr's vehement soapbox speech against the physicists and their alleged downgrading of biological science. Mayr returns to this point numerous times throughout the book, and it seemed that he was as biased against mathematics and physical science as he claimed the physical scientists were towards biology. I disagree that "mathematics is to science as grammar is to language." Grammar is a passive structure which does not influence the thought of the writer. Mathematics is an active vehicle of thought that not only conveys and describes phenomena but can be used as a tool of inquiry.
The second section focused on the diversity of organic life and described the taxonomic problems of classifying the species. The two main fields of this science are macrotaxonomy, which is the methods by which organisms are classified, and microtaxonomy which is concerned with delimiting and recognizing species. Previous to this reading, I was unaware of the importance of taxonomy and diversity within biology. I took for granted the individuality of all creatures and yet never considered the paradox of classifying and grouping individuals into species.
The third section, which received the most attention, dealt with the idea of evolution as it progressed from the ancients to modern thought, with obvious emphasis placed on Charles Darwin. Mayr described all evolutionary theories and I found the various number of ideas associated with evolution in the 50-year time span from Lamarck to Darwin very interesting. Mayr's presentation of Darwinism was the most lucid explanation I have ever read. I particularly liked the breakdown of Darwin's theory into five facts and three inferences for the description of the logic of the theory of natural selection.
A comparison of this section to Michael Ruse's The Darwinian Revolution results in the overshadowing of Ruse by Mayr's more thorough, expert, and comprehensive treatment. For example, Ruse's background to evolution began with Lamarck, while Mayr returns to antiquity. Ruse's treatment of the post-Origin of Species period neglected the resistance to natural selection, simply stating that most scientists were converted by 1875, while Mayr lists and describes ten reasons for the resistance of natural selection.
The final section of the book discussed variation and inheritance consisting of genetic theories from antiquity to 1980, yet the key period dates from Mendel's genetic work. This was a period which ignored and rediscovered Mendel, saw the emergence and rapid growth of modern genetics, and discovered the structure of the DNA molecule. This was my first in-depth study of this field of biology, other than a cursory examination of Mendel, Morgan, and the double helix structure of DNA. What I considered most surprising in this section (and also in the entire book) was Mayr's claim, "There has hardly been a more decisive breakthrough in the whole history of biology than the discovery of the double helix." This information allows scientists to explain the nature of the linear sequence of genes, describes the mechanism for replication, and explains the nature of mutations in chemical terms just to list a few of the double helix advances.
It is my opinion that Mayr wrote an excellent book which accomplished its intent of providing a history of biological ideas. The structure was clear due to his ample use of descriptive chapter and topic titles. I also thought that the title of the book clearly stated that there would be three global ideas that Mayr would trace throughout history--diversity, evolution, and inheritance. My only problem with the content of the book was that Mayr expected the reader to comprehend a broad, detailed range of general biology, particularly in his discussions of the current state of the science. At times I thought that the ideas addressed were not described, so much as they were discussed.
Two other problems that I encountered with the book were the glossary and footnotes. At first, I thought the glossary would be a valuable aid in reading the book, but I was mistaken. He claims to present over 20,000 pieces of information throughout his book. Yet, the glossary only provides 81 definitions; and, seemingly, never the ones that I looked up. For example, he includes a definition for soft inheritance, yet he fails to include an entry for hard inheritance. The other problem I had was with his notation scheme which was adapted from the social sciences (name and year). While he does list some page numbers in his reference section, I would have preferred the standard, historical notation system.
Mayr includes much of his own research into this book because he must believe that it is pertinent to the overall history of ideas in biology. My question is, Is Mayr biased towards the importance of his own work? A glance at the index under the name Mayr reveals 29 references to his own work. The only other individuals with that number of references are Darwin, Lamarck, and Mendel. I also disliked that at times he would refer to himself both in the third person and the first person. This brought an unnecessary confusion to the book.
My greatest criticism (and this is merely a personal judgment based on my own sense of values) was that Mayr's treatment of the subject was very depressing from a spiritual point of view. This took me completely by surprise because of my extreme lack of spiritual definition (if I had to chose a label I would call myself agnostic). Nevertheless, I feel that nature, evolution, and philosophy are areas of inspiration. The description of the origin of life does not, and I think should not, read like the recitation of a geometric proof. Mayr took great steps to avoid any form of anthropocentrism, going so far as to say that animals had a certain culture, albeit exponentially less than man's. This seems like Mayr is confused between animal instinct and human culture--two very different aspects of life.
March 31, 2009
A very thorough and intricately researched text, this is an outstanding overview of the history of biological and evolutionary thought ranging from Aristotle to late 20th century views. Mayr provides clear discussion of relevant issues and broad conceptual overviews in ways that are helpful and (sometimes) interesting. At times Mayr gets very detailed with regards to historical debates, and provides a fairly unbiased view of both sides (much of the time). At times, however, Mayr's attention to detail and zeal for presenting the whole picture can be overwhelming and very dry. On the other hand, each chapter is well cited and can serve as a springboard for further research in the conceptual issues concerning the history and philosophy of biology and evolution. This is a valuable text for anyone interested in this growing field.
September 10, 2008
Yeah well, to be frank, I haven't really finished this book. It's SUPER-EXTRA-THICK, tracing the growth of biological thought (well, of course: it's in the title), and it's like some sort of Bible to me - I can check it time and again if there is something I need to know, from Aristoteles to Darwin, from Harvey to Simpson...
Just amazing. An unparalleled feat.
Just amazing. An unparalleled feat.
March 3, 2009
I can't ever really say I enjoyed a huge science textbook (especially with no pictures!), but Mayr's book was fairly easy to read and understand and was VERY thorough, even if he is a little defensive about biology the entire time.
November 24, 2011
A pleasant little book in case you have a few hours to spare.
That's a joke.
That's a joke.
September 27, 2024
A "HISTORY OF IDEAS IN BIOLOGY"
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists, whose concept of speciation as a key to evolutionary development was critical for such persons as Stephen Jay Gould. He wrote other books such as 'Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist,' 'Populations, Species and Evolution,' etc.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, "Much of modern biology, particularly the various controversies between different schools of thought, cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the historical background of the problems. Whenever I made this point to my students, they would ask me in which book they could read up on these matters. To my embarrassment, I had to admit that none of the published volumes fills this need... these writings are invariably inadequate as far as an analysis of the major problems of biology are concerned or as a history of concepts and ideas in biology.... there is nothing available that covers biology as a whole. To fill this gap in the literature is the object of this work... When I first conceived the plan to write a history of ideas in biology, the goal seemed impossibly remote..."
He observes, "Natural history was a ... source of rebellion against Galileo's mathematical ideal of science. It was particularly promoted by Buffon, who asserted emphatically... that some subjects are far too complicated for a useful employment of mathematics... Even Kant, by 1790, had abandoned his subservience to mathematics. If the invalidity of the mathematical ideal of science had not been obvious before, it certainly became so with the publication of The Descent of Man." (Pg. 41)
He suggests, "It is now clear that a new philosophy of biology is needed. This will include and combine the cybernetic-functional-organizational ideas of functional biology with the populational-historical program-uniqueness-adaptedness concepts of evolutionary biology. Although obvious its essential outlines, this new philosophy of biology is, at the present time, more of a manifesto of something to be achieved than the statement of a mature conceptual system. It is most explicit in its criticism of logical positivism, essentialism, physicalism, and reductionism but is still rather hesitant and inchoate in its major theses." (Pg. 73-74)
He points out, "Long lists of 'early evolutionists' are recorded in some histories of biology... [But] closer analysis fails to substantiate these claims. The forerunners either had theories of 'origins' or the unfolding of immanent potentialities of the type. A true theory of evolution must postulate a gradual transformation of one species into another and ad infinitum." (Pg. 352)
He asks, "What does one call a person who shows the path even though he is not a forerunner in the conventional sense? ... my own work on geographic speciation was stimulated by opposition to Goldschmidt's ['The Material Basis of Evolution'] proposed solution of speciation through systemic mutations. There are literally scores of cases in the history of science where a pioneer in posing a problem arrived at the wrong solution but where opposition to this solution led to the right solution." (Pg. 381)
He states, "Considering how useful an organ the human brain is, the question is sometimes asked, Why did not selection produce as large a brain in all organisms?... It was this inability to account for the large brain of our primitive ancestors which made [Alfred Russel] Wallace doubt that selection could account for the origin of man as MAN. What Wallace overlooked is that the crucial moment in all selection is an emergency or catastrophe. An organ or function is usually not altered by selection during normal times; rather, it is selected at a time when it represents the tail end of the curve of variation and permits its carrier to survive in an emergency... 'Catastrophic selection' ... is a very important evolutionary process." (Pg. 600)
He admits, "The greatest unsolved problem in speciation research remains that of the genetic basis of speciation. To describe the process of speciation, one still relies in the main on inferences from patterns of distribution. It will not be possible to resolve the controversies on the frequency and validity of the various possible modes of speciation until we have acquired a better understanding of the underlying genetic processes." (Pg. 605)
For anyone wanting a history of such controversies in biological (and particularly evolutionary) intellectual history, this book will be warmly welcomed.
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) was one of the leading evolutionary biologists, whose concept of speciation as a key to evolutionary development was critical for such persons as Stephen Jay Gould. He wrote other books such as 'Systematics and the Origin of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist,' 'Populations, Species and Evolution,' etc.'
He wrote in the Preface to this 1982 book, "Much of modern biology, particularly the various controversies between different schools of thought, cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the historical background of the problems. Whenever I made this point to my students, they would ask me in which book they could read up on these matters. To my embarrassment, I had to admit that none of the published volumes fills this need... these writings are invariably inadequate as far as an analysis of the major problems of biology are concerned or as a history of concepts and ideas in biology.... there is nothing available that covers biology as a whole. To fill this gap in the literature is the object of this work... When I first conceived the plan to write a history of ideas in biology, the goal seemed impossibly remote..."
He observes, "Natural history was a ... source of rebellion against Galileo's mathematical ideal of science. It was particularly promoted by Buffon, who asserted emphatically... that some subjects are far too complicated for a useful employment of mathematics... Even Kant, by 1790, had abandoned his subservience to mathematics. If the invalidity of the mathematical ideal of science had not been obvious before, it certainly became so with the publication of The Descent of Man." (Pg. 41)
He suggests, "It is now clear that a new philosophy of biology is needed. This will include and combine the cybernetic-functional-organizational ideas of functional biology with the populational-historical program-uniqueness-adaptedness concepts of evolutionary biology. Although obvious its essential outlines, this new philosophy of biology is, at the present time, more of a manifesto of something to be achieved than the statement of a mature conceptual system. It is most explicit in its criticism of logical positivism, essentialism, physicalism, and reductionism but is still rather hesitant and inchoate in its major theses." (Pg. 73-74)
He points out, "Long lists of 'early evolutionists' are recorded in some histories of biology... [But] closer analysis fails to substantiate these claims. The forerunners either had theories of 'origins' or the unfolding of immanent potentialities of the type. A true theory of evolution must postulate a gradual transformation of one species into another and ad infinitum." (Pg. 352)
He asks, "What does one call a person who shows the path even though he is not a forerunner in the conventional sense? ... my own work on geographic speciation was stimulated by opposition to Goldschmidt's ['The Material Basis of Evolution'] proposed solution of speciation through systemic mutations. There are literally scores of cases in the history of science where a pioneer in posing a problem arrived at the wrong solution but where opposition to this solution led to the right solution." (Pg. 381)
He states, "Considering how useful an organ the human brain is, the question is sometimes asked, Why did not selection produce as large a brain in all organisms?... It was this inability to account for the large brain of our primitive ancestors which made [Alfred Russel] Wallace doubt that selection could account for the origin of man as MAN. What Wallace overlooked is that the crucial moment in all selection is an emergency or catastrophe. An organ or function is usually not altered by selection during normal times; rather, it is selected at a time when it represents the tail end of the curve of variation and permits its carrier to survive in an emergency... 'Catastrophic selection' ... is a very important evolutionary process." (Pg. 600)
He admits, "The greatest unsolved problem in speciation research remains that of the genetic basis of speciation. To describe the process of speciation, one still relies in the main on inferences from patterns of distribution. It will not be possible to resolve the controversies on the frequency and validity of the various possible modes of speciation until we have acquired a better understanding of the underlying genetic processes." (Pg. 605)
For anyone wanting a history of such controversies in biological (and particularly evolutionary) intellectual history, this book will be warmly welcomed.
October 13, 2025
Uno dei pochi libri di storia della biologia e della teoria evolutiva scritto da chi ha partecipato attivamente al progetto, introducendo nuove idee e prospettive a volte geniali., Non tutto quello che ha detto Mayr è corretto, ma questo libro è fondamentale per capire come si è arrivati alla situazione odierna. Attenzione! È aggiornato al 1983, quindi le nuove proposte (sintesi estesa e compagnia bella) sono assenti.
April 7, 2024
Excellent overview of how three key components of biology were discovered and the milieu in which it occurred. Good for people who want to understand not what a concept is but also how it originated and changed over time. Helps illustrate how science is not a monolith. Somewhat technical in some areas, but overall eminently readable.
March 11, 2025
One of Ernst Mayr's masterpieces, this work intricately explores the history and philosophy of biology, particularly how biology freed itself from essentialist philosophy and transitioned to evolutionary thinking throughout the history. He also clarifies the differences between the methods of natural theologians and ensuing naturalists.
November 6, 2016
Very thorough and interesting, although I did skip a few pages where it told me more than I wanted to know. The English is not too difficult, but could have been plainer.
Mayr does go astray a little where he criticises some biologists, especially Richard Dawkins, for the idea that it is the single gene rather than the whole gene pool that is the unit of selection. However, reading "The Selfish Gene", (Immortal Coils chapter) shows that Dawkins is aware that the whole gene pool must be considered as a whole, so I don't think there ever was any real disagreement about the facts. Mayr also contradicts himself by first talking about the gene pool as the unit of selection and then saying that it is the individual organism, even though these are only temporary and not immortal, and even though they only contain a subset of the genes within the gene pool!
Mayr does go astray a little where he criticises some biologists, especially Richard Dawkins, for the idea that it is the single gene rather than the whole gene pool that is the unit of selection. However, reading "The Selfish Gene", (Immortal Coils chapter) shows that Dawkins is aware that the whole gene pool must be considered as a whole, so I don't think there ever was any real disagreement about the facts. Mayr also contradicts himself by first talking about the gene pool as the unit of selection and then saying that it is the individual organism, even though these are only temporary and not immortal, and even though they only contain a subset of the genes within the gene pool!
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October 19, 2009evolution, diversity, inheritance in biology
August 23, 2011
A masterpiece.
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