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Biology as Social Theory: John Scott Haldane and Physiological Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Steve Sturdy
Steve Sturdy
Affiliation:
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Department of Science and Technology Policy, The University, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K.
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Extract

During the first forty years of this century, the concept of a living organism was discussed widely and publicly by biologists and philosophers. Two questions in particular excited discussion. In what ways should organisms be considered different from or the same as dead matter? And what can we learn about the nature of human society by regarding it as analogous to a living organism? Inevitably, these questions were closely related; the conclusions to be drawn about the social organism would depend upon the particular properties attributed to the biological organism. In more recent years, discussion of these issues has largely been in abeyance, as biologists have with-drawn from debate over social policy into a more remote academia. A few biologists who still see their work as relevant to a wider social agenda have continued to treat the nature of life as a contentious issue. But the focus of interest has shifted away from the organismic analogy, which concerns the organization of society as a whole, to issues like sociobiology and evolutionary theory, which emphasize social differentiation and the treatment of out-groups and minorities.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 315 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1988

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References

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Winter Meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, 4 January 1986, and at the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of Biology, University of Maryland, 26 April 1986. I am particularly grateful to David Bloor, Steven Shapin, Christopher Lawrence,Malcolm Nicolson, John T. Edsall, David Boucher and John Pickstone for their comments on earlier drafts.

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44 Haldane, J.S., ‘Life and mechanism. Two lectures delivered at the Physiological Laboratory, Guy's Hospital, May 17 & 24, 1906’, Guy's Hospital Reports, (1906), 60, pp. 89–123, on p. 104.Google Scholar Haldane's conception of the category of teleology, and its apprehension in the biological world, drew heavily on Kant's arguments: see Kant, Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement (tr. Meredith, James Creed), Oxford, 1952Google Scholar, part II, ‘The critique of teleological judgement’. For a discussion of the profound impact which this Kantian notion had on German biology during the first half of the nineteenth century, see Lenoir, Timothy, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in 19th-century German Biology, Dordrecht, 1982.Google Scholar

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56 Haldane, J.S. and Smith, J. Lorrain, ‘The physiological effects of air vitiated by respiration’, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, (1893), 1, pp. 168–186, on p. 179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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70 Indeed, Haldane's functional understanding of physiological phenomena suggested substantive objections to Head's claim to have identified a regulatory reflex mechanism. By slowing down any increase in breathing rate, the reflex inhibition described by Head as ‘vagus apnoea’ would actually lead to a reduction of ventilation just when oxygen was most needed by an organism. As Haldane later observed, ‘from the teleological point of view the existence of vagus apnoea seems extremely improbable. Nothing is more unlikely than that the amount of air breathed should be regulated by nervous impulses acting directly contrary to physiological requirements.’ See Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (57), p. 259Google Scholar; also Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (58), p. 15.Google Scholar

71 Haldane, and Smith, , op. cit. (56), p. 178.Google Scholar

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73 Haldane, J.S. and Mavrogordato, A., ‘The vagus regulation of breathing’, Journal of Physiology, (1916), 50, pp. xli–xliiipGoogle Scholar, on p. xliii. cf. Douglas, C.G. and Haldane, J.S., ‘The regulation of normal breathing’, Journal of Physiology, (1909), 38, pp. 420–440CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Christiansen, J. and Haldane, J.S., ‘The influence of the distention of the lungs on human respiration’, Journal of Physiology, (1914), 48, pp. 272–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

74 Haldane himself repeatedly stressed the importance of his anti-mechanistic commitment in determining the direction of his research programme. See for example Haldane, , op. cit. (20), London, 1932, pp. 35–36Google Scholar; Haldane, , The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 86Google Scholar; Haldane, and Priestley, , op. cit. (58), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

75 Thus, Pnina Abir-Am recalls the opinion of the historian of biochemistry, Edsall, John T.: ‘in his experimental work as a physiologist, Haldane was a mechanist though he opposed mechanism in his philosophically oriented writings’.Google Scholar Cited in Abir-Am, , ‘Recasting the disciplinary order in science: A deconstruction of rhetoric on “biology and physics” at two international congresses in 1931’, Humanity and Society, (1985), 9, pp. 388–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on p. 420 n. 29.

76 Most recently Nils Roll-Hansen has presented a version of this argument, suggesting that the only real difference between holists and mechanists is that the former set limits to biological inquiry and explanation which are not required by the latter: Roll-Hansen, , ‘E.S. Russell and J.H. Woodger: The failure of two twentieth-century opponents of mechanistic biology’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1984), 17, pp. 399–428CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roll-Hansen, , ‘Critical teleology. Immanuel Kant and Claude Bernard on the limitations of experimental biology’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1976), 9, pp. 59–91.Google Scholar

77 See for example Pringle-Pattison, A.S., The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy. Gifford Lectures, Aberdeen, 1912 and 1913, Oxford, 1917, pp. 70–75Google Scholar; Stout, G.F., Mind and Matter. The First of Two Volumes Based on the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1919 and 1921, Cambridge, 1931, pp. 40–42, 107–109.Google Scholar

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79 Haldane laid claim to familiar rhetoric when he argued that scientific progress had been retarded by the adoption, not only of dualistic vitalism, but also of dogmatic mechanism: see for example Haldane, , op. cit. (44), p. 92Google Scholar; and Haldane, , op. cit. (38), pp. 81–82.Google Scholar This view was endorsed in two influential histories of science of that time: Singer, Charles Joseph, A Short History of Biology: A General Introduction to the Study of Living Things, Oxford, 1931Google Scholar, chapter XI; Nordenskiöld, Erik, The History of Biology: A Survey (tr. Eyre, L.B.), London, 1929, pp. 603–612.Google Scholar M.Y. Johari has documented the sympathetic reception of Haldane, 's writings in an M.Sc. thesis on ‘The impact of social and philosophical crisis upon scientific knowledge: The case of British biologists on mechanist—vitualist debate at the beginning of the twentieth century and the First World War’, (University of Manchester, 1979)Google Scholar, chapter II, ‘The mechanist—vitalist debate and John Scott Haldane’. For a contemporary assessment of Haldane's place in the wider organicist movement, see McDougall, William, ‘The philosophy of J.S. Haldane’, Philosophy, (1936), 11, pp. 419–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

80 From accounts of similar cases of the reinterpretation of experimental results, Hilde Hein has argued that conflicts between mechanists and anti-mechanists cannot in principle be decided one way or another by scientific evidence. Individual scientists' preferences must be explained, according to Hein, in terms of wider philosophical and social commitments: Hein, , ‘The endurance of the mechanism—vitalism controversy’, Journal of the History of Biology, (1972), 5, 159–188.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Donna Haraway endorses Hein's view of mechanism and vitalism in her discussion of early twentieth-century embryology: op. cit. (1), pp. 193–206.

81 Haldane, , op. cit. (59), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

82 Haldane himself argued that his work differed from that of the mechanists, not in the methodologies he employed in the laboratory, but in the questions he asked: Haldane, , op. cit. (60), pp. 82–83.Google Scholar His claims are born out by recent studies of mid-nineteenth-century German mechanists and vitalists, which failed to discover any divergence of methodology: Benton, E., ‘Vitalism in nineteenth-century scientific thought: a typology and reassessment’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, (1974–1975), 5, pp. 17–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Mendelsohn, Everett, ‘Physical models and physiological concepts: explanations in nineteenth century biology’, British Journal for the History of Science, (1965), 2, pp. 201–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Elsewhere, however, I have argued that Haldane's methodology did in fact differ from that of many of his professedly mechanistic contemporaries, notably in his use of unviolated subjects, chiefly humans, rather than vivisectioned animal subjects. Moreover, in a somewhat different debate over oxygen secretion, when participants on both sides recognized that the outcome of that debate would have implications for the controversy over mechanistic biology, the adequacy of Haldane's physiological methods was explicitly called into question. For a fuller discussion of this debate, see Sturdy, , op. cit. (5), pp. 216–241.Google Scholar

83 Huxley, T.H., ‘Administrative nihilism’ (1871)Google Scholar, in Huxley, , Method and Results, op. cit. (37), pp. 251–289.Google Scholar On Spencer's use of the organismic analogy, see Peel, J.D.Y., Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist, New York, 1971Google Scholar, chapter VII, ‘The organic analogy’.

84 Jones, Henry, ‘The social organism’, in Seth and Haldane (eds), op. cit. (19), pp. 187–213.Google Scholar

85 Geddes, Patrick, ‘On the application of biology to economies’, Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, (1885), 55, pp. 1166–1167.Google Scholar

86 Haldane, J.S. to Haldane, E.S., 4 10 [?1883]Google Scholar, National Library of Scotland, MS 20232, ff.16–17.

87 Haldane, R.B. and Haldane, J.S., op. cit. (9), pp. 48, 56.Google Scholar

88 Haldane, J.S., The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 248.Google Scholar

89 Haldane, J.B.S., op. cit. (5), p. 32Google Scholar; Markham, Violet Rosa, Friendship's Harvest, London, 1936.Google Scholar Another mining friend and Liberal activist was Sir Richard Redmayne, H.M. Chief Inspector of Mines: see his Men, Mines and Memories, London, 1942.Google Scholar

90 As Freeden put it in his study of the New Liberalism, ‘For liberals, … socialism pertained first to the ethical and only then to the economic sphere … an intellectual and moral revolution had to precede a social and industrial one.’ Freeden, , op. cit. (28), p. 28.Google Scholar

91 This phrase is coined by Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study of the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society, Oxford, 1971, p. 7.Google Scholar See also Vincent, and Plant, , op. cit. (25), pp. 31–33, 83–87.Google Scholar

92 Haldane, J.B.S., ‘Materialism and its opponents’, in A Banned Broadcast and Other Essays, London, 1946, pp. 253–258, on p. 258.Google Scholar

93 Haldane, J.S., Russell, E.S. and MacKenzie, Leslie, ‘Symposium: The relations between biology and psychology’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (1923)Google Scholar, Supplement 3. Relativity, Logic and Mysticism, pp. 56–94Google Scholar, on pp. 66–67; cf. Haldane, , The Sciences and Philosophy, op. cit. (13), p. 251.Google Scholar

94 Haldane, J.S., ‘The risks attending the use of carburetted water-gas for domestic lighting purposes’, Public Health, (1900), 12, pp. 490–509, on p. 505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 This was essentially the same stance as his brother had taken on negotiations over the eight-hour day for miners, some forty-six years previously: Haldane, R.B., ‘The eight hours question’, Contemporary Review, (1980), 57, pp. 240–255.Google Scholar

96 Haldane, J.S., ‘Values in industry’Google Scholar, in Haldane, , op. cit. (20), pp. 187–207, on pp. 191–192.Google Scholar

97 Haldane, , op. cit. (54), pp. 127–128.Google Scholar

98 Haldane, J.S., ‘Lung irritant gas poisoning and its sequelae’, Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, (1919), 33, pp. 494–507Google Scholar, on pp. 502–507. See also Haldane, J.S. to Douglas, C.G., 21 03 1918Google Scholar, letter in the possession of Dr D.J.C. Cunningham.

99 Miller, Jonathan, ‘The dog beneath the skin’, The Listener, (20 07 1972), 88, pp. 74–76.Google Scholar cf. Geison, Gerald L., Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The Scientific Enterprise in Late Victorian Society, Princeton, N.J., 1978, pp. 338–355.Google Scholar For an earlier but comparable metaphorical use of the nervous system, see Lawrence, Christopher J., ‘The nervous system and society in the Scottish Enlightenment’, in Barnes and Shapin (eds), op. cit. (3), pp. 19–40.Google Scholar

100 While at Oxford, Hobhouse went to Haldane for special tuition in biology ‘for the sake of philosophy’: Haldane, J.S. to Haldane, M.E., [autumn 1888]Google Scholar, letter in the possession of Naomi Mitchison. Hobhouse shared Haldane's concern to refute Spencer's social theories, and presumably his biological views as well. Hobhouse subsequently diverged considerably from the philosophical position which Haldane maintained: see Haldane, J.S., Thompson, D'Arcy W., Mitchell, P. Chalmers and Hobhouse, L.T., ‘Symposium: Are physical, biological and psychological categories irreducible?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (1917–1918), 18, pp. 419–478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

101 Hobson, J.A., ‘The re-statement of democracy’, Contemporary Review, (1902), 81, pp. 262–272.Google Scholar

102 MacDiarmid, Hugh, ‘Third Hymn to Lenin’, in MacDiarmid, Selected Poems, Craig, David and Manson, John (eds), Harmondsworth, 1970, pp. 102–111Google Scholar, on pp. 108–109. I am grateful to Malcolm Nicolson for showing me this quotation.