Abstract of presentation at the Phi Beta Kappa address,
American Association for Advancement of Science,

February 28, 1974,

Title: " Do Scientists Understand Science?"

As Medawar and many others have pointed out, scientific papers
sacrifice personal truth for the sake of clear exposition of varifiable
public assertions of scientific fact. To that extent intellectual
historians must beware of relying on such documents as they already
know how to be skeptical of autobiographical retionalizations.

To the extent that the scientific process is not revealed in
scientific publications, it may ‘credibly inferred that scientists do
not understand science or at least that their persoective on the subject
is limited to but a little more than their own personal and often
subjective experience.

The talk was in large measure an appeal to scientists to be more
actively interested in collaboration with historians and sociologists
in order to achieve a better understanding of the larger frame of
their work. There are however serious methodological limitations in
the study of intellectual history, especially at the micro-level of
specific case studies. Inevitably we will find poor records; unreliable
witness and report; an inherent discontinuity of creative thinking
at the micro-level; a retrospective urge to make the story interesting
as well as acurate,.

The major theme of the presentation was the pre-history of molecular
genetics, especially in the interval between 1875 and 1945. This was
an enlargement of a brief note (attached) and leans heavily on the
ongoing collaborative study with Zuckerman, Merton, Thackrey and Elkana

that has been mentioned elsewhere.
The finding in 1946 in which the author participated that bacteria
were endowed with mechanisms for sexual reproduction, played a significant
role in the further development of microbial and molecular genetics.
However, the question may be asked why did the myth prevail for so long
that bacteria are asexual!

The origin of this myth was traced to the observations by von
Leuwenhoek in /67Swho had observed protozoa copulating and remarked
on their sexual behavior but notably failed to find comparable evidence
for sex in his microscopic observations on bacteria. While there are many
other subtleties that would need to be considered, this could be put down
to the gross incapability of the microscope to go quite that far in the
analysis of cellular processes. In 1875 Ferdinand 7.Aj systematized the
biology of bacteria for the first time and was obliged to react strongly
to a number of other myths about these organisms -— for example, as an
extrapolation of the shattered myth of spontaneous generation that there
was but one species of bacterium which was capable of spontaneous evolution
into the full variety of microbial forms as a matter of everyday
contemporary experience, His conservative reaction postulated the strict
genetic stability of bacteria (the doctrine of monomorphism) and rigidified
the concept of bacterial asexuality even in the class name schizomycetes,
Subsequently, the rapid separation of the disciplines of microbiology,
as an applied medical subject of overwhelming human significance, from the
main stream of basic academic biology, impeded a fundamental re-examination
of these premises of microbiological science.

The renewal of evolutionary analysis in the 1940's, the general
ferment to the greater social investment in scientific and especially
in biological research during and immediately after WW ~ and a variety of
other social, historical, intellectual and personal factors were reviewed

as helping to explain the eventual re-examination and overturning of
the myth of asexuality.

Behind the picture of premature and postmature discovery which is
recounted here is an implied model of the nature of scientific progress
which has been sketched out only in rather crude terms and requires much

deeper examination.
    
  
  
   
    
 
 

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