Themes, Genres and Orders of Legitimation in the Consolidation of New Scientific Disciplines: Deconstructing the Historiography of Molecular Biology

History of Science

Volumn 23, Issue 1, 1985, Pages 73-117

  Abir am, Pnina ^a  

^a TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE; MOLECULAR BIOLOGY;

HISTORY OF MEDICINE, MODERN; MOLECULAR BIOLOGY;

EID: 0022024202     PISSN: 00732753     EISSN: 17538564     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/007327538502300103     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. This view was compellingly espoused by the late Jacques Monod in his inaugural address as the incumbent of a new Chair in Molecular Biology at the Collège de France in 1967. For the full text of his address see Monod J., “From molecular biology to the ethics of knowledge”, The human context, i (1969), 325–36. On the relationship between molecular and ‘classical’ biology see also the balanced opinion of the classical biologist in Dobzhansky T., “Biology: Molecular and organismic”, American zoologist, iv (1964), 443–52; see also Abir-Am P., “On the verge of legitimation: The meaning and structure of the resistance to molecular biology in the 1960s” (forthcoming).
2. Jacob F., The logic of life: A history of heredity (New York, 1973), 229 (original French edn: Paris, 1970).
3. For applications of the concept of ‘discipline’ to historical case-studies see Lemaine G., (eds), Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines (Paris, 1977); Graham L., (eds), Functions and uses of disciplinary histories (Dordrecht, 1983); for special reference to molecular biology see Abir-Am P., “The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: A reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation's ‘policy’ in molecular biology”, Social studies of science, xii (1982), 341–82; the notion of an ‘ultra-discipline’ as distinct from hybrid disciplines such as biochemistry or biophysics, and applicable to the rise of molecular biology, is explored in Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 1).
4. See for example, Whelan W. J. and BlackS.,(ed.), From genetic experimentation to biotechnology: The critical transition (New York, 1982); Yoxen E. J., “Life as a productive force: Capitalizing on the science and technology of molecular biology”, in Levidow L. and Young R. (eds), Science, technology and the labour process (London, 1981), 66–122.
5. See especially the wide counter-reaction to Monod's “From molecular biology” (ref. 1) and his best selling Chance and necessity: An essay on the natural philosophy of modern biology (New York, 1972) (original French edn: Le Hasard et la necessité (Paris, 1970)), as expressed for example in Althusser L., Philosophie et philosophie spontanée des savants (Paris, 1967), 117–53 (Appendice sur Jacques Monod), and Lewis J., The uniqueness of man (London, 1974); for a discussion of these and several other books reacting to Monod's deployment of discoveries in molecular biology in an anti-religious and anti-Marxist polemic (the counter-reaction to Monod divides between these two positions), see Yoxen E. J., The social impact of molecular biology (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1978). For a fellow molecular biologist's reaction to Monod's deduction of an ethical philosophy from molecular biology see Stent G. S., “Molecular biology and metaphysics”, in his Paradoxes of progress (San Francisco, 1978), 115–29. Fellow molecular biologists, by and large, avoided discussing the unusual impact of Monod's Chance and necessity. For an interpretation of this avoidance see Abir-Am P., “How scientists view their heroes: Some remarks on the mechanisms of myth construction” (essay review of Monod's memorial volume, Origins of molecular biology: A tribute to Jacques Monod, ed. by Lwoff A. and Ullmann A. (New York, 1979)), in Journal of the history of biology, xv (1982), 281–316.
6. See for example Kendrew J. C., “European molecular biology organization”, Nature, ccxviii (1968), 840–2; idem, Report of the Working Group on Molecular Biology (London, 1968).
7. See for example Stent G. S., “That was the molecular biology that was”, Science, clx (1968), 390–5; Kendrew J. C., “How molecular biology started?”, Scientific American, ccxvi (1967), 141–3; idem, “Some remarks on the history of molecular biology”, Biochemical Society symposia, 30 (1970), 5–10; Hess L., “Origins of molecular biology”, Science, clxviii (1970), 664–9; Weaver W., “Molecular biology: Origin of the term”, Science, clxx (1970), 591–2; Luria S. E., “Molecular biology: Past, present, future”, Bioscience, xx (1970), 1289–94; Perutz M. F., “Origins of molecular biology”. New scientist (31 January 1980), 326–9; Cohen S., “The biochemical origins of molecular biology”, Trends in biochemical sciences, vii (1984), 972–4; Waddington C. H., “Some European contributions to the prehistory of molecular biology”, Nature, ccxx (1969), 318–21.
8. Of special interest to us are the following collective attempts by various groups of molecular biologists to define their own history while ‘proving’ their affiliation to a hero-scientist, thereof projected as an ancestor of molecular biology: Cairns J. Stent G. S. and Watson J. D. (eds), Phage and the origins of molecular biology (Cold Spring Harbor, New York, 1966); Rich A. and DavidsonN.,(eds). Structural chemistry and molecular biology (Sun Francisco, 1968); Monod J. and Borek E. (eds), Of microbes and life (Ithaca, New York, 1971); Lwoff A. and UllmannA.,(ed.), Origins of molecular biology: A tribute to Jacques Monod (New York, 1979).
9. Abir-Am P., “Five myths of origins in the history of molecular biology: Deconstructing collective accounts by practising scientists as first-order legitimations” (forthcoming); for references to myths of origins in the history of science see Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 5), 284–285; Bensaude-Vincent B., “Une mythologie révolutionnaire dans la chimie fran&çaise”. Annals of science, xl (1983), 189–96.
10. On deconstruction as a method/theory for uncovering and interpreting submerged rhetorical devices in texts, usually philosophic or literary see Norris C., Deconstruction: Theory and practice (London and New York, 1982). The following essay extends the current applications of deconstruction to historiographically oriented meta-scientific texts while reinterpreting them in terms of both new historical evidence and new social-theoretical insights. These new dual terms of reference will be detailed in a future issue. On orders of legitimation see Berger P. and Luckman T., The social construction of reality (New York, 1967).
11. Watson J. D. and Crick F. H. C., “A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid”, Nature, clxxi (1953), 737–738; idem, “Genetical implications of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid”, Nature, clxxi (1953), 964–7; Meselson M. and Stahl F. W., “The replication of DNA in E. coli”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, xliv (1958), 672–82.
12. Zukerkandl E. and Pauling L., “Evolutionary divergence and convergence in proteins”, in Bryson V. and Vogel H. J. (eds), Evolving genes and proteins (New York, 1965), 97–166.
13. Jacob F. and Monod J., “Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins”, Journal of molecular biology, iii (1961), 318–56.
14. Monod J. Wyman J. and Changeux J. P., “On the nature of allosteric transitions: A plausible model”, Journal of molecular biology, xii (1965), 88–118.
15. For an illuminating treatment of this question see Canguilhem G., The normal and the pathological (Boston, 1982).
16. Lwoff A., The biological order (Cambridge, Mass., 1960); Jacob, op. cit. (ref. 2); Monod, op. cit. (ref. 5).
17. See for example, Foucault M., The order of things (London, 1970); Castel R., L'Ordre psychiatrique (Paris, 1976); Clavreul J., L'Ordre medical (Paris, 1978); Lwoff, The biological order (ref. 17); BarreauH.,(ed.), L'Explication dans les sciences de la vie (Paris, 1983).
18. The most notable master of this style was the late Jacques Monod in his best selling chance and necessity (ref. 5); Sajet's vocabulary is largely borrowed from this source. For a more recent example of this style see Debru C., L'Esprit des proteines, histoire et philosophie biochimiques (Paris, 1983).
19. Abir-Am P., “Biochemists on molecular biology: The politics of small versus large biological molecules”, in Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 1), Section 3; idem, (review of The origins of modern biochemistry: A retrospect on proteins). The British journal for the history of science, xxi (1982), 301–306; idem, “From biochemistry to molecular biology…” (ref. II); Lewontin R. C., “A molecular messiah: The new gospel in genetics?”, Science, cxlv (1964), 566–7; Waddington C. H., “Molecular biology or ultrastructural biology?”. Nature, cxc (1961), 184.
20. Olby, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1975), xxii.
21. See for example, Olby's treatment of various scientists who stuck to beliefs or interpretations of data which remained eventually outside the ‘path’ to the double helix, including Levene's tetra-nucleotide hypothesis of DNA primary structure (ch. 6, especially 81–82), the virus chemists who clung to the protein nature of viruses (ch. 10, especially 158–60), Astbury's early lack of model building (ch. 5, especially 68–69, Bernal's lacking of a theory of helical diffraction and his avoidance of work on fibrous biological material thus ‘missing’ DNA (ch. 16, especially 260–3), Chargaff's ‘missing’ the meaning of the base-ratios (ch. 14, especially 220), the impact of research schools (ch. 22-conclusions-440) and the retrospective projection of the Central Dogma of the late 1950s while referring to the “Protein version of the Central Dogma” in Section II. Some of these points were formerly made by Olby's most perceptive reviewers, Teich M., History of science, xiii (1975), 264–83, and Cohen S. S., Science, cl36i (1975), 827–30.
22. Watson J. D., The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA (New York, 1968); idem, “Growing up in the Phage Group”, in Cairns Stent and Watson (eds), op. cit. (ref. 8), 239–45. See also Fleming D., “Emigré physicists”, in Fleming and Bailyn (eds), The intellectual migration (ref. 11), 251–89.
23. Olby, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1975), 240–246; idem, Schroedinger's problem: What is life?”, Journal of the history of biology, iv (1971), 119–48; see also Yoxen, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1979).
24. Max Delbruck to Robert Olby, 24 June 1971, quoted in part in Olby, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1975), 241; copy in Delbruck's Papers, Caltech Archives, Pasadena, Calif.
25. For biographical information on Delbruck see Kopp C., oral interview and guide to Delbruck's Papers, Caltech Archives; see also the recollections of associates and students in Cairns Stent and Watson (eds), op. cit. (ref. 8).
26. I examined the Delbruck Papers, Caltech Archives, in the summer of 1979; there is no evidence there of contacts with Schroedinger; Yoxen examined the Schroedinger papers and reported on the disparity of Schroedinger's and Bohr/Delbruck's views on complementarity in his op. cit. (ref. 11, 1979). See also Section D below.
27. See Cairns Stent and Watson,(ed.), op. cit. (ref. 8); contacts between Watson and Delbruck as pursued by Olby in op. cit. (ref. 11, 1975), 459, 491. The complexity of Watson's relationship with Delbruck seemed to have eluded Olby who also failed to notice that by 1956 Delbruck totally dissociated himself from Watson (an important piece of information, especially for someone who extrapolates school effects from the present to the past).
28. For a sociological analysis of the Phage Group, see Mullins N., “The development of scientific specialities: The Phage Group and the origins of molecular biology”, Minerva, x (1972), 51–82; however, this analysis has certain built-in limitations since it draws uncritically on the anniversary volume produced by Cairns, et al(eds), op. cit. (ref. 8). For applications of the concept of ‘school’ in social history of science and its virtues as a methodological guideline see Geison G. L., “Scientific charge, emerging specialities and research schools”, History of science, xix (1981), 20–40; this essay surveys about a dozen applications including Crosland M. P., The society of Arcueil: A view of French science at the time of Napoleon I (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Morrell J. B., “The chemist-breeders: The research schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson”, Ambix, xix (1972), 1–46; Geison G. L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology (Princeton, 1978). Geison acknowledged that the dynamics of groups to which a school effect was attributed has not been completely examined for interrelations among its members, both intellectual and social; see Geison (1978), 314. This and the fact that schools are instruments of social control of cognition, not ‘mere’ means of transmitting conceptual legacies, focus my argument against Olby's superficial deployment of the concept of a school in early molecular biology. It is beyond the scope of this paper fully to explore the historical relevance of ‘schools’ to contenders such as the Phage Group or the X-ray protein crystallographers in Britain, renamed as the “Informational School” and the “Structural School” of molecular biology, respectively, by Olby.
29. Bernal's closest collaborators in the 1930s, on work of biological relevance were D. Crowfoot (1910 -) and Fankuchen I. (1904–64). Olby does not explore to what extent Bernal's associates, including Perutz, might have operated as a ‘school’; see Olby, The path (ref. 11), 258–66. See also Edsall J. T. Bearman D. and Abir-Am P., “Report of Personal Papers of J. D. Bernal, W. T. Astbury and I. Fankuchen”, Newsletter of the Survey of Sources for the History of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, no. 10 (1981), 2–11. For a sociological analysis of Bernal's collaborators on biological material see Law J., “The formation of specialties in science: The case of X-ray protein crystallography”, Science studies, iii (1973), 275–303.
30. Olby brings evidence that Crick planned to study with Bernal but once this plan did not materialize, apparently for administrative reasons, Crick went to the Strangeways Laboratory in Cambridge and later to the Cavendish Laboratory's section of Perutz and Kendrew, having made no effort to rejoin Bernal in London. Nor does Olby bring evidence that Crick was in contact with Bernal. If Bernal's influence was ‘passed on’ to Crick by either Perutz or Kendrew (who had sporadic contacts of their own with Bernal in the late 1930s and mid-1940s, respectively) then Olby does not explore how Crick was eventually prepared to abandon his colleagues’ emphasis upon X-ray protein crystallography for stereochemical and genetic theorizing on DNA; for Olby's discussion of Crick's background, see Olby, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1975), ch. 18. Bernal's Personal Papers at the Cambridge University Library show no evidence of contact with Crick aside from an exchange of congratulations and thanks on the occasion of Crick's Nobel Prize in 1962. Though Crick does acknowledge his debt to Bernal's pioneering X-ray study of biological macromolecules in this ‘thank you’ note, it is difficult to accept this belated acknowledgement as conclusive evidence for the historical existence of a school of molecular biology involving Bernal and Crick, among others, in the preceding period.
31. See Hobsbawm E. and RangerT.,(ed.), The invention of tradition (New York, 1983).
32. See Kendrew, op. cit. (refs 7 and 6).
33. Astbury W. T., “Adventures in molecular biology”, Harvey lectures, xlvi (1951), 3–44.
34. See Monod Wyman and Changeux, op. cit. (ref. 15).
35. See Perutz, op. cit. (ref. 7).
36. Stent, op. cit. (ref. 7).
37. Stent G. S., “Prematurity and uniqueness in scientific discovery”, Scientific American, ccxxvii (1972), 84–93; idem. The coming of the golden age: The rise and decline of molecular biology (New York, 1969); Kendrew J. C., “Conformation and information in biology” in Rich and Davidson (eds), op. cit. (ref. 8), 187–97; idem, op. cit. (ref. 7, 1970).
38. Kendrew, op. cit. (ref. 40).
39. Judson, op. cit. (ref. 11), 205.
40. Crick F. H. C., “Molecular biology in the year 2000”, Nature, ccxxii (1970), 678–9.
41. Judson, op. cit. (ref. 11), 207.
42. For an analysis of the crucial role of cycles of credit in scientific activity, see Latour B. and Woolgar S., Laboratory life: The social construction of scientific facts (London, 1979), ch. 5. For an elaborate argument on the struggle over the monopolization of scientific authority in molecular biology in the 1960s, see Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 1); see also Bourdieu P., “The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions for the progress of reason”, Social science information, xiv (1974), 19–47; idem, “Comment controller la verité?”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, no. xxv (1979), 3–24; Cambrosio A. and Keating P., “The disciplinary stake: The case of chronobiology”, Social studies of science, xiii (1983), 323–53.
43. Judson, op. cit. (ref. 11), back cover.
44. For a different view see Yoxen, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1979), and Sajet, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1978).
45. Judson, op. cit. (ref. 11), 612.
46. On Avery see Dubos R., The institute, the professor and DNA (New York, 1976); Abir-Am P., “From biochemistry and molecular biology: DNA and the acculturated journey of the critic of science Erwin Chargaff”, History and philosophy of life science, ii (1980), 3–60.
47. Judson, op. cit. (ref. 11), 611.
48. Holmes F. L., “Conceptual history”, Studies in the history of biology, i (1977), 209–18.
49. See Chargaff E., Heraclitean fire: Sketches of a life before nature (New York, 1978); see also Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 11, 1980).
50. Chargaff E., “Chemical specificity of nucleic acids and mechanism of their enzymatic degradation”, Experientia, vi (1950), 201–9.
51. Abir-Am, op. cit. (ref. 1).