Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

On the Genesis of the Idiotypic Network Theory

  • Published:
Journal of the History of Biology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The idiotypic network theory (INT) was conceived by the Danish immunologist Niels Kaj Jerne in 1973/1974. It proposes an overall view of the immune system as a network of lymphocytes and antibodies. The paper tries to offer a reconstruction of the genesis of the theory, now generally discarded and of mostly historical interest, first of all, by taking into account the context in which Jerne’s theoretical proposal was advanced. It is argued the theory challenged, in a sense, the supremacy of the clonal selection theory (CST), this being regarded as the predominant paradigm in the immunological scenario. As CST found shortcomings in explaining certain phenomena, anomalies, one could view INT as a competing paradigm claiming to be able to make sense of such phenomena in its own conceptual framework. After a summary outline of the historical background and some relevant terminological elucidations, a narrative of the various phases of elaboration of the theory is proposed, up to its official public presentation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alexander, Jerome. 1932. “Some Intracellular Aspects of Life and Disease.” Protoplasma 14 (1): 296–306.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barabási, Albert-Lázló. 2003. Linked. New York: Plume.

    Google Scholar 

  • Behn, Ulrich. 2007. “Idiotypic Networks: Toward a Renaissance?” Immunological Reviews 216 (1): 142–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breinl, Friedrich and Haurowitz, Felix. 1930. “Chemische Untersuchungen des Praezipitates aus Haemoglobin und Antihaemoglobulin-Serum und Bemerkungen ueber die Natur der Antikoerper.” Zeitschrift für physiologische Chemie 192: 45–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Norman O. 1959. Life Against Death. The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane. 1957. “A Modification of Jerne’s Theory of Antibody Production Using the Concept of Clonal Selection.” Australian Journal of Science 20 (3): 67–71.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane. 1959. The Clonal Selection Theory of Acquired Immunity. Cambridge and Nashville, TN: Cambridge and Vanderbilt University Presses.

    Google Scholar 

  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane. 1960. “Immunological Recognition of Self.” Nobel Lectures-Physiology or Medicine. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 689–701.

  • Burnet, Frank Macfarlane. 1968. Changing Patterns. Melbourne: William Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Canguilhem, Georges. 1988. “Le statut épistémologique de la médicine.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 10 (suppl.): 15–38.

  • Carneiro, Jorge. 1997. Towards a Comprehensive View of the Immune System. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Porto, available on http://eao.igc.gulbenkian.pt/ti/Documents/Dissertation-JorgeCarneiro-1997.pdf.

  • Cohen, Irun R. 1992. “The Cognitive Paradigm and the Immunological Homunculus.” Immunology Today 13 (12): 490–494.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Melvin. 1994. “The Wisdom of Hindsight.” Annual Review of Immunology 12: 1–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohn, Melvin. 2001. “Logic of Self-Nonself Discrimination: Principles and History.” Anne-Marie Moulin, Alberto Cambrosio (ed.), Singular Selves: Historical Issues and Contemporary Debates in Immunology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 53–85.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corbellini, Gilberto. 1990. “L’immunologia e la sua storia.” Gilberto Corbellini (ed.), L’evoluzione del pensiero immunologico. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 9–57.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corbellini, Gilberto. 1996. “Sistema immunitario.” Enrico Bellone, Corrado Mangione, and L Geymonat (eds.), Storia del pensiero filosofico e scientifico. Milan: Garzanti, pp. 254–285.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delavenay, Émile. 1959. La machine à traduire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ehrlich, Paul. 1899. “Croonian Lecture. On Immunity with Special Reference to Cell Life.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 66 (424–433): 424–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eichmann, Klaus. 2008. The Network Collective. Rise and Fall of a Scientific Paradigm. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleck, Ludvik. 1935. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftliche Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv. Basel: Benno Schwabe und Co. Verlagsbuchhandlung.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1955. “The Natural-Selection Theory of Antibody Formation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), USA 41 (11): 849–857.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1960a. “Immunological Speculations.” Annual Review of Microbiology 14: 341–358.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1960b. “Theories of Antibody Formation.” M. Holub and L. Jarusková (eds.), Mechanisms of Antibody Formation, Proceedings of a Symposium. Prague: Publishing House of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, pp. 206–207.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1966a. “Antibody Formation and Immunological Memory.” J Gaito (ed.), Macromolecules and Behavior. Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 151–157.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1966b. “The Natural Selection Theory of Antibody Formation; Ten Years Later.” J. Cairns, G.S. Stent, and J.D. Watson (eds.), Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology, pp. 301–312.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1967. “Summary: Waiting for the End.” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 32: 591–603.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1969. “The Complete Solution of Immunology.” Australasian Annals of Medicine 18 (4): 345–348.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1970. “Generation of Antibody Diversity and Self-Tolerance. A New Theory.” R.T. Smith and M. Landy (eds.), Immune Surveillance. New York: Academic Press, pp. 345–363.

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1971. “The Somatic Generation of Immune Recognition.” European Journal of Immunology 1 (1): 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1972. “What Precedes Clonal Selection?” R. Porter and J. Knight (eds.), Ontogeny of Acquired Immunity, Ciba Foundation Symposium 1971. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 1–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1973. “The Immune System.” Scientific American 229 (1): 52–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K. 1974. “Towards a Network Theory of the Immune System.” Annales d’immunologie 125C (1–2): 373–389.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jerne, Niels K., and Nordin, Albert. 1963. “Plaque Formation in Agar by Single Antibody-Producing Cells.” Science 140 (3565): 405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelus, Andrew S., and Gell, Philip G.H. 1968. “Immunological Analysis of Rabbit Anti-Antibody Systems.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 127 (1): 215–234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn, Thomas S. 1977. The Essential Tension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landsteiner, Karl. 1945 [1933]. The Specificity of Serological Reactions. Rev. edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Lederberg, Joshua. 1959. “Genes and Antibodies.” Science 129 (3364): 1649–1653.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindenmann, Jean. 1973. “Speculations on Idiotypes and Homebodies.” Annales d’immunologie 124C (2): 171–184.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, Melanie. 2006. “Complex systems: Network thinking.” Artificial Intelligence 170 (18): 1194–1212.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mudd, Stuart. 1932. “A Hypothetical Mechanism of Antibody Formation.” Journal of Immunology 23 (6): 423–427.

    Google Scholar 

  • Odelberg, Wilhelm (ed.). 1985. Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1984. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oudin, Jacques. 1966. “The Genetic Control of Immunoglobulin Synthesis.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B 166 (3): 207–221.

  • Oudin, Jacques.—— 1968. “L’hétérogénéité des immunoglobulines telle qu’elle est révélée par leurs trois sortes de spécificités antigéniques: isotypiques, allotypiques et idiotypiques.” Bulletin de la Société de chimie biologique (Paris) 50 (5–6): 965–990.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oudin, Jacques. 1972. “Allotypie et idiotypie.” Mémoires de l’Académie Royale de Médecine de Belgique 7 (6): 425–438.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oudin, Jacques. 1974. “L’idiotypie des anticorps.” Annales d’immunologie 125C (1–2): 309–337.

    Google Scholar 

  • Oudin, Jacques, and Michel, Mauricette. 1963. “Une nouvelle forme d’allotypie des globulines γ du sérum de Lapin, apparemment liée à la fonction et à la spécificité anticorps.” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences (Paris) 257 (1): 805–808.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pauling, Linus. 1940. “A Theory of the Structure and Process of Formation of Antibodies.” Journal of the American Chemical Society 32 (10): 2643–2657.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Podolsky, Scott H., and Tauber, Alfred I. 1997. The Generation of Diversity: Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramseier, H., and Lindenmann, Jean. 1972. “Aliotypic Antibodies.” Transplantation Reviews 10 (1): 57–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schaffner, Kenneth. 1994. “Interactions Among Theory, Experiment, and Technology in Molecular Biology.” PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers, pp. 192–205.

  • Silverstein, Arthur. 1989. A History of Immunology. San Diego: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Söderqvist, Thomas. 2003. Science as Autobiography. The Troubled Life of Niels Jerne. New Haven: Yale University Press. Revised and abridged version of the Danish edition Hvilken kamp for at undslippe. Copenhagen: Borgen, 1998.

  • Söderqvist, Thomas, and Stillwell, Craig. 1999. “Essay Review: The Historiography of Immunology is Still in Its Infancy.” Journal of the History of Biology 32 (1): 205–215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talmage, David W. 1957. “Allergy and Immunology.” Annual Review of Medicine 8: 239–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talmage, David W. 1959. “Immunological Specificity.” Science 129 (3364): 1643–1648.

  • Tauber, Alfred I. 1994. The Immune Self: Theory or Metaphor? New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tononi, Giulio, Sporns, O., and Edelman, G.M. 1999. “Measures of Degeneracy and Redundancy in Biological Networks.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), USA 96 (6): 3257–3262.

  • Topley, William W.C. 1930. “The Rôle of the Spleen in the Production of Antibodies.”, Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology 33 (2): 339–351.

    Google Scholar 

  • Urbain, Jacques. 1986. “Idiotypic Networks: A Noisy Background or a Breakthrough in Immunological Thinking? The Broken Mirror Hypothesis.” Annales de l’Institut Pasteur. Immunologie 137C (1): 57–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dr. Andrea Grignolio, who read part of the manuscript and offered very valuable advice. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor, who helped greatly improve the paper. Prof. Jean Lindenmann is gratefully acknowledged for providing me with and allowing to quote copy of his correspondence with Jerne.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, via P. Paoli 15, 56126, Pisa, Italy

    Andrea Civello

Authors
  1. Andrea Civello
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Civello.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Civello, A. On the Genesis of the Idiotypic Network Theory. J Hist Biol 46, 125–158 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-012-9346-4

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-012-9346-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation