The role of the virus in origin-of-life theorizing

Journal of the History of Biology

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 79-126

  Podolsky, Scott ^a  

^a NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOGENESIS; HISTORY; MICROBIOLOGY; VIRUS;

BIOGENESIS; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; MICROBIOLOGY; VIRUSES;

EID: 0030094003     PISSN: 00225010     EISSN: 15730387     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF00129697     Document Type: Article

References (178)

1. J. B. S. Haldane, “What Is Life,” in Keeping Cool and Other Essays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1940), p. 48.
2. John Farley, The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 151–187.
3. Harmke Kamminga, “The Protoplasm and the Gene,” in Clay Minerals and the Origins of Life, ed. G. Cairns-Smith and H. Hartman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 1–10. See also idem, “Historical Perspective: The Problem of the Origin of Life in the Context of Developments in Biology,” Orig. Life Evol. Biosph., 18 (1988), 1–11.
4. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 483–484, 490; Louis Pasteur, “Memoir on the Organized Corpuscules Which Exist in the Atmosphere: An Examination of the Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation,” trans. Mordecai L. Gabriel, in Great Experiments in Biology, ed. Mordecai L. Gabriel and Seymour Fogel (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1955), pp. 110–118 (originally published in Ann. Chim. Phys., 64 [1862], 1–110).
5. Thomas Henry Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 2nd American ed. (New Haven: Charles C. Chatfield, 1870), pp. 19, 23–24.
6. Harmke Kamminga, “The Protoplasm and the Gene,” in Clay Minerals and the Origins of Life, ed. G. Cairns-Smith and H. Hartman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 2–4.
7. Kamminga, “Historical Perspective” (above, n. 3), pp. 1–2.
8. For an example of the latter proposal, see Charles B. Lippman, “The Origin of Life,” Sci. Monthly, 19 (1924), 363–364.
9. E. A. Minchin, “Joint Discussion with Section K On the Origin of Life: Introductory Remarks,” in Report of the 82nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (London: John Murray, 1913), p. 510. See also Harmke Kamminga, “Studies in the History of Ideas on the Origin of Life,” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1980, pp. 288–290.
10. H. E. Armstrong, “The Origin of Life: A Chemist's Fantasy,” in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of The Smithsonian Institution, 1912 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), pp. 539–540.
11. Leonard Thompson Troland, “The Chemical Origin and Regulation of Life,” Monist, 24 (1914), 103–105.
12. Herman J. Muller, “The Gene as the Basis of Life,” in Proceedings of the International Congress of Plant Sciences, ed. B. M. Duggar (Menasha: George Banta, 1929), pp. 917–918.
13. Norman Horowitz, “On the Evolution of Biochemical Synthesis,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), 31 (1945), 153–157.
14. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), pp. 199–234 (originally published as Proishkhozhdenie zhizni [Moscow: Izd. Moskovskii rabochii, 1924]). See also Oparin, The Origin of Life, trans. Sergius Morgulis (New York: Macmillan, 1938); J. B. S. Haldane, “The Origin of Life,” Rationalist Ann. (1929), 1–10.
15. Gillian Beer, Darwin's Plots (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), p. 80. Beer derives her conception of analogy from Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (London: Sheed and Ward, 1963).
16. Manfred Eigen, Steps towards Life: A Perspective on Evolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 3.
17. Sally Smith Hughes, The Virus: A History of the Concept (New York: Science History Publications, 1977), p. 112.
18. D. M. Ivanovski, “On the Mosaic Disease of the Tobacco Plant,” trans. Mordecai L. Gabriel, in Gabriel and Fogel, Great Experiments in Biology (above, n. 4), pp. 124–126 (originally published in Bull. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersburg, 35 [1892], 67–70).
19. M. W. Beijerinck, “A Contagium vivum fluidum as the Cause of the Mosaic Disease of Tobacco Leaves,” trans. Thomas D. Brock, in Milestones in Microbiology, ed. Thomas D. Brock (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 153–157 (originally published in Centralbl. Bakter. Parasit., 5 [1899], 27–33).
20. Ivanovski, “Mosaic Disease” (above, n. 18), pp. 125–126; Beijerinck, “Contagium vivum fluidum” (above, n. 19), p. 155.
21. Thomas M. Rivers, “The Nature of Viruses,” Physiol. Rev., 12 (1932), 429.
22. Lise Wilkinson and A. P. Waterson, “The Development of the Virus Concept as Reflected in Corpora of Studies on Individual Pathogens,” Med. Hist., 19 (1975), 59; J. C. G. Ledingham, “Studies on Virus Problems,” Bull. Johns Hopkins Univ. Hosp., 56 (1935), 339.
23. F. W. Twort, “An Investigation of the Nature of Ultra-Microscopic Viruses,” Lancet (1915), 2, 1241–1243.
24. Félix d'Hérelle, “An Invisible Microbe That Is Antagonistic to the Dysentery Bacillus,” trans. Thomas D. Brock, in Brock, Milestones in Microbiology (above, n. 24), pp. 157–159 (originally published in Comp. Rend. Hebd. Séa. Acad. Sci., 165 [1917], 373–375.)
25. Félix d'Hérelle, “Bacteriophage: A Living Colloidal Micell,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 537 (originally cited by d'Hérelle in Comp. Rend. Séa. Soc. Biol. Fil., 83 [1920], 247).
26. Félix d'Hérelle, The Bacteriophage and Its Behavior (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1926), pp. 333–336.
27. Félix d'Hérelle, The Bacteriophage and Its Behavior (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1926), p. 336.
28. Donna H. Duckworth, “Chapter 1: History and Basic Properties of Bacterial Viruses,” in The Ecology of Phage (in press). See also d'Hérelle, Bacteriophage and Its Behavior (above, n. 26), pp. 311–312.
29. Duckworth, “Chapter 1,” p. 6.
30. Charles E. Simon, “The Filterable Viruses,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 533. For a more nuanced reading of the bacteriophage debate from the 1920s–1940s, see Ton Van Helvoort, “The Construction of Bacteriophage as Bacterial Virus: Linking endogenous and Exogenous Thought Styles,” J. Hist. Biol., 27 (1994), 91–139.
31. Thomas M. Rivers, “Spontaneous Generation and Filterable Viruses,” Northwest Med., 29 (1930), 559; Henry H. Dale, Viruses and Heterogenesis: An Old Problem in New Form (London: Macmillan, 1935), pp. 23–24.
32. Dale, Viruses and Heterogenesis, pp. 23–24.
33. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, “The Bacteriophages,” Biol. Rev. Biol. Proc. Cambridge Phil. Soc., 9 (1934), 333.
34. Herman J. Muller, “Variation Due to Change in the Individual Gene,” Amer.Nat., 56 (1922), 48. See Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), pp. 48–49.
35. Herman J. Muller, “The Gene as the Basis of Life,” in Proceedings of the International Congress of Plant Sciences, ed. B. M. Duggar (Menasha: George Banta, 1929), p. 918.
36. See d'Hérelle, “Bacteriophage” (above, n. 25); Simon, “Filterable Viruses” (above, n. 30).
37. A summary of this article would shortly follow in Science: Jerome Alexander and Calvin Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” Science, 70 (1929), 508–510.
38. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28),II, 17.
39. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28),II, 17.
40. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 17. p. 23.
41. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 17. p. 52.
42. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 17. pp. 52–56.
43. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 17. p. 57.
44. Jerome Alexander and Calvin B. Bridges, “Some Physico-Chemical Aspects of Life, Mutation, and Evolution,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), II, 17. p. 54.
45. H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells, The Science of Life (New York: Literary Guild, 1934), pp. 650–653.
46. Haldane, “Origin of Life” (above, n. 14), pp. 7–8. This was the basis for terming the socalled heterotroph hypothesis the “Oparin-Haldane hypothesis.” Many origin-of-life theories until this time had assumed primordial autotrophs, rather than heterotrophs.
47. For an excellent overview of J. S. Haldane's organicist philosophy, see J. S. Haldane, The Sciences and Philosophy: The Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, 1927–1928 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1929).
48. J. B. S. Haldane, “Some Consequences of Materialism,” in Science and Human Life (New York: Harper, 1933), p. 158.
49. See J. B. S. Haldane, The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938).
50. Winslow Herschel, “Consistency,” in Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, ed. Jerome Alexander, 2 vols. (New York: Chemical Catalog, 1926–28), I, 727.
51. J. B. S. Haldane, “Enzymes,” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers (New York: Harper, 1928), p. 48.
52. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), p. 7.
53. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), p. 8.
54. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), pp. 4–5.
55. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), p. 9.
56. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), p. 10.
57. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland: World, 1967), p. 9.
58. Wendell M. Stanley, “Isolation of a Crystalline Protein Possessing the Properties of Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” Science, 81 (1935), 644.
59. Wendell M. Stanley, “Isolation of a Crystalline Protein Possessing the Properties of Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” Science, 81 (1935), p 654. By 1937, F. C. Bawden and Norman Pirie, finding a 0.51% phosphorus content in their crystallized tobacco mosaic virus, would update Stanley's observations and refer to the virus as a nucleoprotein. Stanley would in 1937 refer to the nucleic acid content as a contaminant, but would soon agree with Bawden and Pirie. In any event, with nucleic acids and proteins so little differentiated functionally, this did not affect the nucleocentrists. See F. C. Bawden and N. W. Pirie, “The Isolation and Some Properties of Liquid Crystalline Substances from Solanaceous Plants Infected with Three Strains of Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” Proc. Roy. Soc. London, ser. B, 123 (1937), 284–285.
60. J. B. S. Haldane, “Can We Make Life,” in Keeping Cool and Other Essays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1940, p. 26.)
61. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), p. 74.
62. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), p. 71.
63. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), pp. 69–70.
64. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), p. 81. See also E. C. C. Baly, J. B. Davies, M. R. Johnson, and H. Shanassy, “Photosynthesis of Naturally Occurring Compounds: I. Action of Ultra-Violet Light on Carbonic Acid,” Proc. Roy. Soc. London, ser. A, 16 (1927), 197–202.
65. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), pp. 84–85.
66. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), pp. 80–81, 88.
67. Beutner also placed his presentation within a particularly reductionist context, remarking: “it will probably be discovered that life, which seems so immensely involved and incomprehensible in all its complexity, is nothing more than one of the innumerable properties of the compounds of carbon” Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), p. 78).
68. Alexander Oparin, “The Origin of Life,” trans. Ann Synge, in J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (Cleveland Word, 1967), pp. 145–146.
69. Kamminga, “Studies in The History of Ideas” (above, n. 9), p. 279.
70. Reinhard Beutner, Life's Beginning on the Earth (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1938), pp. 95–96. Beutner inserted the chapter “A Survey of Oparin's Book: The Origin of Life” as an addendum to his book after the manuscript had already gone to press.
71. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, “Recent Work on the Biological Nature of Bacteriophages,” Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg., 26 (1934), 413.
72. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, “Recent Work on the Biological Nature of Bacteriophages,” Trans. Roy. Soc. Trop. Med. Hyg., 26 (1934), 413.
73. Charles Darwin to W. H. Harvey, August 1860, in Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward, More Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. I (New York: Appleton, 1887), 165.
74. J. B. S. Haldane, The Causes of Evolution (London: Harper, 1932), p. 139.
75. J. B. S. Haldane, The Causes of Evolution (London: Harper, 1932), p. 153.
76. Robert G. Green, “On the Nature of the Filterable Viruses,” Science, 82 (1935), 444.
77. Robert G. Green, “On the Nature of the Filterable Viruses,” Science, 82 (1935), 444.
78. Robert G. Green, “On the Nature of the Filterable Viruses,” Science, 82 (1935), p 445.
79. Sir Patrick Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 32.
80. Sir Patrick Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 33.
81. Sir Patrick Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), pp. 33–34.
82. Sir Patrick Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), pp. 46–47.
83. Sir Patrick Laidlaw, Virus Diseases and Viruses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 47.
84. André Lwoff, L'évolution physiologique: Étude des pertes de fonctions chez les microorganismes (Paris: Hermann, 1943); discussed and quoted in André Lwoff, “Introduction to Biochemistry of Protozoa,” in Biochemistry and Physiology of Protozoa, ed. idem (New York: Academic Press, 1951), pp. 19–20.
85. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, Virus as Organism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 20.
86. Salvador E. Luria, General Virology (New York: Wiley, 1953), p. 346. This is not to say that the view of “primordial viruses” was never proposed. C. H. Andrewes-who in early 1951 had professed his belief in the Green-Laidlaw hhpothesis-by the end of the same year, perceiving the viruses as belonging to a different kingdom from the rest of life on the basis of their eclipse stage during intracellular growth, asked that his colleagues not totally cast aside the disabused notion of the primordial virus. It does not appear that he was heeded. See C. H. Andrewes, “Viruses as Organisms,” in Poliomyelitis: Papers and Discussions Presented at the Second International Poliomyelitis Conference (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1952), p. 4.
87. Jan Sapp, Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 115–122.
88. Edgar Altenburg, “The ‘Viroid’ Theory in Relation to Plasmagenes, Viruses, Cancer and Plastids,” Amer. Nat., 80 (1946), 562–563.
89. H. J. Muller, paraphrase of C. D. Darlington, in “Pilgrim Trust Lecture: The Gene,” Proc. Roy. Soc. London, ser. B, 134 (1947), 17. See also C. D. Darlington, “Heredity, Development, and Infection,” Nature, 154 (1944), 167–169.
90. G. W. Beadle and E. L. Tatum, “Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), 27 (1941), 499–500, 506.
91. Kamminga, “Studies in The History of Ideas” (above, n. 9), p. 298.
92. Norman Horowitz, “Evolution of Biochemical Synthesis” (above, n. 13), p. 153.
93. Ibid., pp. 155–156.
94. Ibid., p. 156.
95. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 233–236.
96. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 236.
97. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 237.
98. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 241.
99. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 240.
100. J. B. S. Haldane, “The Origins of Life,” New Biol., 16 (1954), 21.
101. J. B. S. Haldane, “The Origins of Life,” New Biol., 16 (1954), 22, 26.
102. J. B. S. Haldane, “The Origins of Life,” New Biol., 16 (1954), p 22.
103. J. B. S. Haldane, “The Biochemistry of the Individual,” in Perspectives in Biochemistry: Thirty-one Essays Presented to Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937), pp. 1–10. Haldane would by 1957 publish an article on the origin of life that did explicitly incorporate the one gene-one enzyme hypothesis: see J. B. S. Haldane, “Genesis of Life,” in The Planet Earth, ed. D. R. Bates (London: Pergamon Press, 1957), pp. 296–297.
104. This is not to say, however, that there can be no reductionist left-intellectuals; it is simply to say that in the 1930s, many left-intellectual scientists both politically advocated socialism or Marxism and epistemologically advocated dialectical materialism. For an excellent overview of this entire movement, see Gary Werskey, The Visible College (New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1979). See also J. D. Bernal, “Dialectical Materialism,” Mod. Quart., 3 (Spring 1948), 80–101; N. W. Pirie, “The Nature and Development of Life and of Our Ideas about It,” Mod. Quart., 3 (Summer 1948), 82–93.
105. J. D. Bernal, The Physical Basis of Life (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951), pp. 43–44. On the page preceding this admission, Bernal had committed to the Green-Laidlaw hypothesis as an explanation for virus evolution.
106. Jan Sapp, Beyond the Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. xiv.
107. George Beadle, “Genes and Biological Enigmas,” in Science in Progress, 6th ser., ed. George A. Baitsell (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 240.
108. James D. Watson and Francis H. Crick, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature, 171 (April 1953), 737.
109. As Beadle's comment in 1949 indicates, the phage group may not have been quite as successful in discovering a general model for heredity as it was in understanding the phage in its own right and in stimulating interest in what would come to be called molecular biology.
110. Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 56–67.
111. Bawden and Pirie, “Isolation and Some Properties” (above, n. 59), pp. 284–285.
112. Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, “Independent Functions of Viral Protein and Nucleic Acid in Growth of Bacteriophage,” J. Gen. Physiol., 36 (1952), 54.
113. Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat and Robley C. Williams, “Reconstitution of Active Tobacco Mosaic Virus from Its Inactive Protein and Nucleic Acid Components,” Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), 41 (1955), 690–697.
114. Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat, “The Role of the Nucleic Acid in the Reconstitution of Active Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 78 (1956), 883.
115. A. Gierer and G. Schramm, “Infectivity of Ribonucleic Acid from Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” Nature, 177 (1956), 702.
116. Frank MacFarlane Burnet, Virus as Organism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 127.
117. André Lwoff, “The Concept of the Virus,” J. Gen. Microbiol., 17 (1957), 244.
118. C. H. Andrewes, “Viruses and Linnaeus,” Acta Pathol. Microbiol. Scand., 28 (1951), 224.
119. C. H. Andrewes, “Viruses and Linnaeus,” Acta Pathol. Microbiol. Scand., 28 (1951), p 212.
120. Some virologists, however, did oppose what they perceived as a misapplication of Linnaean nomenclature to a field in which it had no place. See N. W. Pirie, “Concepts out of Context: The Pied Pipers of Science,” Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 2 (1951), 270.
121. Max Lauffer, Viruses: From the Twentieth Annual Priestley Lectures (State College, Pa.: Pennsylvania State College, 1946), p. 54.
122. Loren Graham, Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), pp. 80–84.
123. Ton van Helvoort has laid the groundwork for such an analysis of Pirie: see “What Is a Virus? The Case of Tobacco Mosaic Disease,” Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., 22 (1991), 573–577.
124. Wendell Stanley, “The Reproduction of Virus Proteins,” Amer. Nat., 72 (1938), 118–119.
125. Wendell Stanley, George F. Lull, E. H. Volwiler, Alexander A. Day, and Irving J. Lee, “Virus Research and Your Health,” Reviewing Stand, 8 (1947), 8.
126. Wendell Stanley, “Properties of Viruses,” Medicine, 18 (1939), 442.
127. Wendell Stanley, “The Reproduction of Virus Proteins,” Amer. Nat., 72 (1938), pp. 110, 122–123.
128. Wendell Stanley, “Chemical Properties of Viruses,” Sci. Monthly, 53 (1941), 203.
129. Sally Smith Hughes, The Virus: A History of the Concept (New York: Science History Publications, 1977), pp. 104–105.
130. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on the Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 315 (hereafter, First International Symposium).
131. Hideo Moriyama, The Nature of Viruses and The Origin of Life (Tokyo: Shonan Hygiene Institute, 1955), pp. 129–132.
132. Hideo Moriyama, The Nature of Viruses and The Origin of Life (Tokyo: Shonan Hygiene Institute, 1955), p. 229.
133. O. Lepeshinskaya and G. P. Kalina, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, pp. 484, 495.
134. For further information on the conference, see John Farley, The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 179–181; Kamminga, “Studies in the History of Ideas” (above, n. 9), pp. 308–316.
135. J. D. Bernal, “The Problem of Stages in Biopoesis,” in First International Symposium, p. 38.
136. Alexander I. Oparin, “Foreword,” in ibid., p. xi.
137. Norman Horowitz, “On Defining ‘Life,’” in ibid., p. 106.
138. Ibid., p. 107.
139. N. W. Pirie, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, pp. 117–118.
140. N. W. Pirie, “The Meaninglessness of the Terms Life and Living,” in Perspectives in Biochemistry (above, n. 103), pp. 11–22.
141. A. E. Braunshtein, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, p. 118.
142. Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat and Beatrice Singer, “The Infective Nucleic Acid from Tobacco Mosaic Virus,” in ibid., p. 303.
143. Ibid.
144. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on the Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 313.
145. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 315.
146. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 316.
147. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 315.
148. Lwoff, “Concept of the Virus” (above, n. 117), p. 245.
149. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 315. It must be noted, however, that Stanley was not the only scientist at the time to conflate the two terms: Lwoff himself had done so in the above-cited article. Nevertheless, such a conflation does appear to have buttressed Stanley's presentation of the virus as no different from nay other living organism.
150. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 319. Stanley, as has been mentioned, was a colecturer of Beadle's at Yale University's Silliman Lectures in 1947.
151. Wendell Stanley, “On the Nature of Viruses, Genes, and Life,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium on The Origin of Life on the Earth, ed. F. Clark and R. L. M. Synge (London: Pergamon Press, 1959), p. 318.
152. N. W. Pirie, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, p. 370. Drawing upon van Helvoort, it can be seen that Pirie's comments also bespoke a long-standing difference with Stanley over the nature of the virus. See van Helvoort, “What Is a Virus?” (above, n. 123), pp. 573–575.
153. A. A. Smorodintsev and V. Ryzhkov, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, pp. 371, 374. According to Mark Adams, Ryzhkov was actually attacked by Lysenko (and perhaps Oparin) at the 1948 meeting in the Soviet Union in which genetics was banned; see Mark Adams, “Aleksandr Ivanovich Oparin,” Dict. Sci. Biog., 17: 695–700.
154. Alexander Oparin, General Discussion, in First International Symposium, p. 368.
155. N. W. Pirie, “The Origins of Life-Moscow Symposium,” Nature, 180 (1957), 888.
156. N. W. Pirie to Scott Podolsky, January 28, 1993.
157. Ibid. See also Pirie, “Origins of Life-Moscow Symposium” (above, n. 155), p. 888.
158. J. B. S. Haldane, “The Mechanical Chess-Player,” Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 3 (1952), 190.
159. N. W. Pirie, “Some Assumptions Underlying Discussion on the Origins of Life,” Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 69 (1957), 371.
160. Twenty-eight of the thirty-four participants at the conference were American.
161. See discussion following Peter Mora, “The Folly of Probability,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), pp. 52–64 (hereafter, Origins of Prebiological Systems).
162. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), p. 12.
163. Alexander Rich, “On the Problems of Evolution and Biochemical Information Transfer,” in Horizons in Biochemistry, ed. Michael Kasha and Bermard Pullman (New York: Academic Press, 1962), pp. 123–124.
164. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), pp. 13, 15.
165. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), p. 12.
166. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), p. 12.
167. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), p. 14.
168. J. B. S. Haldane, “Data Needed for a Blueprint of the First Organism,” in The Origins of Prebiological Systems and of Their Molecular Matrices: Proceedings of a Conference Conducted at Wakulla Springs, Florida on 27–30 October 1963, ed. Sidney W. Fox (New York: Academic Press, 1965), p. 16. Rich, however, was far more open to such a phylogenetic interpretation; see Rich, “Problems of Evolution” (above, n. 163), p. 124.
169. Gerhard Schramm, “Synthesis of Nucleosides and Polynucleotides with Metaphosphate Esters,” in Origins of Prebiological Systems, p. 300.
170. J. M. Buchanan, “Chairman's Remarks,” in ibid., p. 102.
171. N. W. Pirie, Discussion following T. H. Jukes, “Coding Triplets in the Evolution of Hemoglobin and Cytochrome C Genes,” in ibid., p. 436.
172. John Keosian, “Life's Beginnings: Origin or Evolution?” Orig. Life, 5 (1974), 285.
173. Gail Raney Fleischaker, “Genesis of Life: An Operational Definition,” Orig. Life Evol. Biosph., 20 (1990), 127.
174. In Eigen's analysis, selection does not operate upon individual sequences, but rather upon series of sequences whose informational content is clustered around a particular mean sequence, or “master sequence.” Such groups of sequences are called “quasi-species.” See Manfred Eigen, William Gardiner, Peter Schuster, and Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch, “The Origin of Genetic Information,” Sci. Amer., 244 (1981), 99–101.
175. In Eigen's analysis, selection does not operate upon individual sequences, but rather upon series of sequences whose informational content is clustered around a particular mean sequence, or “master sequence.” Such groups of sequences are called “quasi-species.” See Manfred Eigen, William Gardiner, Peter Schuster, and Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch, “The Origin of Genetic Information,” Sci. Amer., 244 (1981), pp 102, 104, 106, 108.
176. Note the unrepentant ignoring of the role of energy-transfer in the following statement: “The primitive soup did face an energy crisis: early life forms needed somehow to extract chemical energy from the molecules in the soup. For the story we have to tell here it is not important how they did so; some system of energy storage and delivery based on phosphates can be assumed” (ibid., p. 88).
177. Thomas R. Cech, “RNA as an Enzyme,” Sci. Amer., 255 (1986), 64.
178. Manfred Eigen, Bjorn F. Lindemann, Manfred Tietze, Ruthild Winkler-Oswatitsch, Andreas Dress, and Arndt von Haeseler, “How Old Is the Genetic Code? Statistical Geometry of tRNA Provides an Answer,” Science, 244 (1989), 673.