Zammito, John H. (Author)
University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 2017
Language: English
Physical Details: 560 pages
The emergence of biology as a distinct science in the eighteenth century has long been a subject of scholarly controversy. Michel Foucault, on the one hand, argued that its appearance only after 1800 represented a fundamental rupture with the natural history that preceded it, marking the beginnings of modernity. Ernst Mayr, on the other hand, insisted that even the word "biology" was unclear in its meaning as late as 1800, and that the field itself was essentially prospective well into the 1800s. In The Gestation of German Biology, historian of ideas John Zammito presents a different version of the emergence of the field, one that takes on both Foucault and Mayr and emphasizes the scientific progress throughout the eighteenth century that led to the recognition of the need for a special science. The embrace of the term biology around 1800, Zammito shows, was the culmination of a convergence between natural history and human physiology that led to the development of comparative physiology and morphology—the foundations of biology. Magisterial in scope, Zammito’s book offers nothing less than a revisionist history of the field, with which anyone interested in the origins of biology will have to contend.
...MoreEssay Review Marco Tamborini (2018) Expanding the History of Natural History. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 390-401).
Review Joan Steigerwald (2019) Review of "The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling". HOPOS (pp. 205-208).
Review Francesco Paolo de Ceglia (2021) Review of "La philosophie de la biologie avant la biologie: Une histoire du vitalisme". Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza (pp. 493-496).
Review Thomas Broman (2019) Review of "The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling". American Historical Review (pp. 1974-1975).
Review Maurizio Esposito (2018) Review of "The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 29-32).
Review Tamás Demeter; Gábor Áron Zemplén (2019) Review of "The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 413-414).
Review Lynn Nyhart (2018) Review of "The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 593-595).
Article Phillip R. Sloan (2019) Life Science and Naturphilosophie: Rethinking the relationship. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (pp. 98-100).
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