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Homeostasis and the Forgotten Vitalist Roots of Adaptation

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Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800-2010

Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 2))

Abstract

Through most of the twentieth century, biology’s image as a valid science has been gauged by how closely it adheres to the norms of “objective” sciences like physics, chemistry and mathematics. Strains of biological thought that depart from this norm are deemed non-scientific. This presumes that life is fundamentally a physical, chemical and thermodynamic phenomenon. While this approach has been very fruitful, it is questionable that it can lead to a coherent theory of biology. This is particularly the case for certain obvious (self-evident?) properties of living systems, including purposefulness, design, and intentionality. The tendency has been to treat these phenomena as illusions, as in numerous invocations of “apparent” design, “apparent” purposefulness and “apparent” intentionality. I argue in this essay that these phenomena are far from illusory, but are in fact quite real. I further argue that a coherent theory of biology must account for purpose, design and intentionality, and I offer one possible way to do so through the fundamental phenomenon of homeostasis.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hein (1972).

  2. 2.

    Normandin (2007).

  3. 3.

    Cannon (1932), Wolfe et al. (2000).

  4. 4.

    Oppenheimer (1948), Virtanen (1960).

  5. 5.

    Varela et al. (1974), Benson (1989), Margulis (1997), Maturana (1999).

  6. 6.

    Turner (2013).

  7. 7.

    Bloch (1989), Gross (2008).

  8. 8.

    Normandin (2007), Wolfe (2008).

  9. 9.

    Normandin (2007), Cheung (2008).

  10. 10.

    Bordeu (1751, § CXXV), in Bordeu (1818, vol. 1, 187).

  11. 11.

    Dawson (1908).

  12. 12.

    Magendie (1819), in Dawson (1908, 6–7).

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    Foster (1899).

  15. 15.

    Normandin (2007), Virtanen (1960).

  16. 16.

    Gross (2008), Oppenheimer (1948).

  17. 17.

    Pennisi (2010).

  18. 18.

    Bloch (1989).

  19. 19.

    Needham (1970).

  20. 20.

    Cziko (2000).

  21. 21.

    Henderson (1913).

  22. 22.

    Cannon (1932), Wolfe et al. (2000), Cannon (1926, 1929).

  23. 23.

    Rosenblueth et al. (1943).

  24. 24.

    Mayr (1982).

  25. 25.

    Golley (1993).

  26. 26.

    Capra (1996).

  27. 27.

    Ullman (2007).

  28. 28.

    Hölldobler and Wilson (2009).

  29. 29.

    Lovelock (1987).

  30. 30.

    Margulis (1971), Margulis (1981).

  31. 31.

    Doolittle (1981), Dawkins (1982), Williams (1992).

  32. 32.

    Bligh (1973).

  33. 33.

    Nagashima et al. (2000).

  34. 34.

    Kobayashi (1989), Romanovsky (2007).

  35. 35.

    Hudson (1973), King and Farner (1961), Kronenberg and Heller (1982), Prosser (1973), Templeton (1970).

  36. 36.

    Bligh (1980), Lyons (1861), Stitt (1979).

  37. 37.

    Cabanac and Rossetti (1987), Casterlin and Reynolds (1977a, b), Covert and Reynolds (1977), Kluger (1979), Reynolds and Covert (1977), McClain et al. (1988).

  38. 38.

    Raskin et al. (1987), Seymour et al. (1983).

  39. 39.

    Schmidt-Nielsen (1994).

  40. 40.

    Bowler (1983).

  41. 41.

    Mayr (1982).

  42. 42.

    Gayon (2000), Reiss (2009).

  43. 43.

    Ruse (2003, 2008).

  44. 44.

    Purushotham and Sullivan (2010).

  45. 45.

    In limiting his focus to the milieu intérieur, Bernard reveals himself to be solidly embedded in the Physicalist school of medicine. Physicalism was an outgrowth of the Cartesian division between ineffable mind and machine-like body, in which understanding the body as a machine was the principal scientific focus. A corollary of this idea was the clear division between machine-like organism and physical environment. This came to be a very powerful force in European physiology, with the German physiologists such as Hermann van Helmholtz exerting the strongest gravitational pull. Bernard himself was never quite comfortable with the strong materialist implications of this, but it was nevertheless the intellectual environment in which he lived. Political motivation also cannot be discounted, because the example of German physiology was a useful goad to the French authorities to cough up the needed resources to bolster France’s relatively feeble physiological endeavors: for nearly his entire career, Bernard found himself starved for laboratory space and assistants; he did much of his pioneering work in a musty space under a staircase at the Collège de France, or out of his home, to the chagrin of his militantly anti-vivisectionist wife, who eventually left him over the matter. One cannot gainsay these efforts: for all of Bernard’s considerable intellectual achievements on behalf of physiology, he also left French physiology much better off institutionally.

  46. 46.

    Turner (2007c).

  47. 47.

    Turner (2000).

  48. 48.

    Plotkin (1993).

  49. 49.

    Turner (2007a, c).

  50. 50.

    I use the word in both its senses: as a material object of heredity, and as a snippet of programmed code. Turner (in press).

  51. 51.

    “Junk” DNA in humans constitutes over 97 % of the nucleotide sequence of the human genome. Cf. Biemont and Vieira (2006), Wong et al. (2000).

  52. 52.

    Ferrer et al. (2010), Franchi et al. (1962), Longo and Anderson (1974), Matthews (1962), Zuckerman et al. (1962).

  53. 53.

    Cairns-Smith and Hartman (1986), Dyson (1999), Fry (2000), Shapiro (1986).

  54. 54.

    Dobzhansky (1970).

  55. 55.

    Jablonka and Lamb (1998a, b, 2005), Gilbert and Epel (2009).

  56. 56.

    Turner (in press).

  57. 57.

    Hoffmeyer (2008), Kull (1999).

  58. 58.

    Turner (2007c).

  59. 59.

    Dembski (1999), Turner (2007b), Meyer (2009).

  60. 60.

    Bowler (1992), Hicks (2011).

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Acknowledgments

This chapter is part of a book project, Biology’s Second Law: Evolution, Purpose and Desire, supported through the generosity of a grant from the John C Templeton Foundation.

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  1. Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY-ESF, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA

    J. Scott Turner

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  1. Lyman Briggs College, Michigan State University, Auditorium Road 426, East Lansing, 48824, Michigan, USA

    Sebastian Normandin

  2. Centre for History of Science, Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, 9000, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

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Turner, J.S. (2013). Homeostasis and the Forgotten Vitalist Roots of Adaptation. In: Normandin, S., Wolfe, C. (eds) Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800-2010. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2445-7_11

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