History of biology

The cover page of Erasmus Darwin's poem The Temple of Nature shows how nature, represented in the person of the goddess Artemis , is revealed by a personification of poetry. Engraving after a drawing by Johann Heinrich Füssli

The history of biology examines all efforts to understand the world of life from ancient times to modern times. Although biology did not emerge as a uniform discipline until the 19th century, its roots reach back through medical traditions and natural history to Indian Ayurveda , medicine in Ancient Egypt and the works of Aristotle and Galenos in the Greco-Roman world. The ancient knowledge was further developed in the Middle Ages by Arabic medicine and by scholars like Avicenna . During the European Renaissance and the early modern period, interest in biological thinking in Europe was revolutionized by the development of empiricism and the discovery of many new species . On the one hand Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey should be mentioned here, who further developed physiology through careful observation and experiments , on the other hand naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon should be mentioned, who introduced the scientific classification of organisms and fossils and who dealt with the development and behavior of organisms busy. The invention of the microscope revealed the hitherto unknown “world” of microorganisms and enabled the formulation of the cell theory . The growing importance of natural theology , partly as a reaction to the mechanistic worldview , increased the interest of scholars in questions of natural history, although this also promoted teleological ideas.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, botany and zoology became separate scientific disciplines. Lavoisier and other natural scientists began to study living and inanimate natural things by means of chemical and physical investigation methods. Explorers like Alexander von Humboldt investigated the relationships between organisms and their environment. By noting that these relationships depend on geographic conditions, they laid the foundations for the sciences of biogeography , ecology, and behavioral studies .

Proponents of naturalistic theories began to reject essentialism . Instead, they emphasized that biological species can become extinct and discovered the variation in species . Cell theory provided new insights into the understanding of organisms. These insights, along with knowledge from embryology and paleontology , were brought together by Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection . At the end of the 19th century, the idea of spontaneous generation was recognized as wrong and replaced by the theory of the germ line , although the knowledge of genetics necessary for a deeper understanding was still lacking.

Mendel's rules were rediscovered in the early 20th century . This promoted the rapid growth in genetic knowledge by Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students. By combining principles of population genetics with natural selection, scientists created the neo-Darwinian synthesis . New scientific disciplines quickly emerged after James D. Watson and Francis Crick proposed the structure of DNA . After the establishment of the “central dogma” of molecular biology and the decoding of the genetic code , the biology was split into the “biology of organisms”, which deals with living things, and the research field of cell biology and molecular biology. In the late 20th century, genome research and proteomics emerged as disciplines that reversed the trend towards the splitting of biology. In these research areas, living organisms use methods of molecular biology, while molecular and cell biologists study the interplay between genes and the environment as well as the genetics of natural populations of organisms.

etymology

The word biology consists on the one hand of the Greek word βίος (bios = 'life') and on the other hand the suffix '-logie', which means 'science of' or 'knowledge of' and from the Greek verb λέγειν , legein = 'to choose', ' To summarize' (cf. also the noun λόγος , logos = 'word'). The term biology in its modern meaning was introduced by various authors who first used it independently of one another. In the title of volume 3 of Michael Christoph Hanow's Philosophiae naturalis sive physicae dogmaticae: Geologia, biologia, phytologia generalis et dendrologia , published in 1766, the expression appears for the first time. Thomas Beddoes first used the word in the modern sense in 1799. Karl Friedrich Burdach used it in 1800, Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus ( Biology or Philosophy of Living Nature , 1802) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck ( Hydrogeneology , 1802) at the same time in the early 19th century.

Before the term biology was widely used, the study of animals and plants took place in very different fields. The word natural history is used to describe a discipline that deals with the descriptive aspects of biology. This includes mineralogy and other non-biological subjects. From the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the concept of the scala naturae or the Great Chain of Being was the uniform frame of reference in natural history. In contrast, the conceptual and metaphysical foundations of the study of organisms were dealt with under the headings of natural philosophy and natural theology . Scholars dealt with the problem of why living beings exist and why they behave just like this and not differently. However, these questions were also asked in the fields of geology , physics , chemistry and astronomy . Physiology and botanical pharmacology belong to the field of medicine. Before biology established itself as a science, in the 18th and 19th centuries 'botany' and 'zoology' and - in the case of fossils - geology increasingly replaced natural history and natural philosophy.

Knowledge of ancient and medieval nature

Early cultures

The earliest humans may have had knowledge of plants and animals that improved their chances of survival. This could have included knowledge of human and animal anatomy and aspects of animal behavior (e.g. via migration). A turning point in the history of early human knowledge of nature began with the Neolithic Revolution about 10,000 years ago. At this time the first crops were used for agriculture and the first herds of cattle were raised in the emerging sedentary cultures.

In the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia , Egypt , the Indian subcontinent and China , there were among others experienced surgeons and natural history scholars such as Sushruta and Zhang Zhongjing , who developed sophisticated systems of natural philosophy. The roots of modern biology, however, are usually sought in the secular tradition of ancient Greek philosophy . One of the oldest developed medical knowledge systems originated on the Indian subcontinent under the name Ayurveda . It was made around 1500 BC. Developed from the wisdom of Atharvaveda . Other ancient medical texts come from the Egyptian tradition , such as the Edwin Smith papyrus . Medical knowledge is also required for embalming , which is necessary for mummification in order to protect the internal organs from decay .

In ancient China, biological knowledge can be found in a wide variety of disciplines, including Chinese herbalism, doctors, alchemists and Chinese philosophy . The Taoist tradition of Chinese alchemy can be seen as part of the Chinese " life sciences " whose aim, in addition to the establishment of health, was to find the philosopher's stone . The system of classical Chinese medicine usually revolves around the theory of yin and yang and the five-element theory . Taoist philosophers like Zhuangzi wrote in the 4th century BC Chr. Formulated evolutionary ideas by denying the immutability of biological species and suspecting that species developed different properties in response to their environment.

In the ancient Indian Ayurveda tradition, a three-juices teaching similar to the humoral pathology of ancient Greek medicine was independently developed, although the Ayurvedic system makes additional assumptions, such as the idea that the body is made up of five elements and seven tissues . Ayurvedic authors divided the living natural things into four categories based on the notion of the nature of birth (body, eggs, heat and moisture, and seeds). They explained the conception of a fetus in detail. They also had considerable success in surgery , often without the use of human dissection or animal vivisection . One of the first Ayurvedic treatises was the Sushruta Samhita , ascribed to Sushruta, which was written in the 6th century BC. Lived. It was also one of the first materia medica and contained the description of 700 medicinal plants, 64 mineral preparations and 57 preparations based on animal materials.

Ancient Greek tradition

Title page of a version from 1644 of the expanded and illustrated edition of the Historia Plantarum from the 13th century, originally from around 300 BC. Was written.

The pre-Socratics asked many questions about life, but their teachings provided little systematic knowledge of specific biological problems. In contrast, the attempt by the atomists to understand life on the basis of physical principles alone has been taken up again and again in the course of the history of biology. The medical theories of Hippocrates and his successors, particularly the proponents of humoral pathology , also had a long-lasting influence on biological thinking.

The philosopher Aristotle was the most influential scholar of classical antiquity . Although his early contributions to natural philosophy were mainly speculative, Aristotle later wrote more empirically oriented studies with a special focus on biological processes and the diversity of life forms. He made countless observations of nature, especially the peculiarities and attributes of plants and animals in the nature surrounding him, and described them when he was of the opinion that categorization was worthwhile. Aristotle described 540 species and vivisected at least 50 species . He believed that all natural processes are determined by purposes .

Up until the 18th century, Aristotle and most of the scholars of the western world who followed him were convinced that all living beings were arranged in an ascending hierarchical order, which represented increasing perfection from plants to animals to humans. Aristotle's successor in the Lyceum , Theophrastus , wrote a number of books on plants. Among other things, his Historia Plantarum , which was regarded as the most important ancient treatise on botany until the Middle Ages . Many of the names introduced by Theophrastus are still in use today, such as carpos for fruit and pericarpion for seed pod . Pliny the Elder was also known for his knowledge of botany and nature. His work Naturalis historia is also an important collection of zoological descriptions.

Some Hellenistic scholars in the time of the Ptolemies , notably Herophilus and Erasistratos , improved the physiological work of Aristotle and performed anatomical dissections of animals. Galenus was the most important ancient authority on medicine and anatomy. Although some ancient atomists such as Lucretius the teleological presented marked Creation ideas of Aristotle questioned has teleology (and after the rise of Christianity , the Natural Theology ) to the 18th and 19th centuries played a central role in biological thinking. Ernst Mayr explained that "after Lukretz and Galen, nothing significant happened until the Renaissance." In fact, the Greek ideas about natural history and medicine were not questioned until the Middle Ages.

Middle Ages and Arab World

A biological-medical treatise by Ibn an-Nafis , an early devotee of biological experiments and discoverer of the pulmonary circulation and coronary arteries

The fall of the Roman Empire led to a significant loss of knowledge and skills. However, doctors preserved the Greek traditions of medical knowledge through tradition and training. In the Byzantine Empire and in the Islamic world, many works of ancient Greece were translated into Arabic and the writings of Aristotle were preserved.

Between the 8th and 13th centuries, in the “ golden age of Islam ”, which is also regarded as the time of the agricultural revolution in the Middle East, medieval Arab doctors , scientists and philosophers made important contributions to the understanding of biological issues. In zoology , al-Jahiz (781–869) developed early evolutionary ideas, such as the concept of the “struggle for existence”. He knew the concept of a food chain and was an early exponent of geodeterminism .

The Persian scholar Ad-Dīnawarī (828-896) is regarded with his book Book of Plants as the founder of botany . He described at least 637 species, discussed the development of plants, described the phases of plant growth and the development of flowers and fruits. Al-Biruni knew the concept of breeding and suspected that nature acts in a similar way - an idea that has been compared to Darwin's natural selection .

The Persian doctor Avicenna (980-1037) carried out clinical studies and described the principles of clinical pharmacology in the work Qanun at-Tibb ( Canon of Medicine ) . This work remained a recognized textbook in European medicine until the 17th century. The Spanish - Arab physician Avenzoar (1091–1161) was an early exponent of experimental animal anatomy. He succeeded in proving that the scabies are caused by parasites , with which he questioned the common humoral pathology. He also performed surgical experiments on animals before applying the surgical techniques on humans. During a famine in Egypt around 1200, Abd-el-latif examined a large number of skeletons and found that Galen had been wrong about the formation of the bones of the lower jaw and sacrum . In the early 13th century, the Spanish-Arabic scholar Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati developed an early form of the scientific method for botanical studies. He used empirical methods and experimental techniques to review, describe, and identify numerous materiae medicae , distinguishing unconfirmed reports from those confirmed by experience and verification. His student Abu Muhammad ibn al-Baitar (approx. 1190-1248) wrote a pharmaceutical encyclopedia in which he described 1400 plants , foods and medicines . 300 descriptions were his own discovery. A Latin translation of his work was used by European scholars and pharmacists until the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Arab doctor Ibn an-Nafis (1213-1288) was also a representative of experimental research methods. In 1242 he discovered the pulmonary circulation and the coronary vessels and thus the basis of the blood circulation . He also described a model of metabolism and criticized Galen and Avicenna's misconceptions about humoral pathology, pulse , bones, muscles, intestines, sense organs, bile ducts, esophagus and stomach.

De arte venandi cum avibus , by Frederick II , was an influential medieval work on scavenger hunt and ornithology .

During the High Middle Ages, some European scholars such as Hildegard von Bingen , Albertus Magnus and Friedrich II deepened the canon of natural history. In contrast to the situation in the fields of physics and philosophy, the development of medieval European universities had little influence on the progress of scholarship in the field of biology.

Renaissance and the early modern development

As a result of the European Renaissance , interest in empirical natural history and physiology increased among European scholars. In 1543, Andreas Vesalius published his famous anatomical treatise De humani corporis fabrica , which was based on the examination of human corpses and ushered in the modern era of European medicine. Vesalius was the first in a series of anatomists who gradually replaced scholasticism with empiricism in physiology and medicine, replacing ancient authority and abstract thinking with first-hand experience. The empirically oriented doctors operated herbal medicine has been so in the case of the study of plants a source of a renewed empiricism. Otto Brunfels , Hieronymus Bock and Leonhart Fuchs wrote detailed writings on wild plants and thus created the modern foundations for an approach to botany based on nature observation. Medieval animal poetry forms a literary genre that combines the natural and pictorial knowledge of the time and becomes more detailed and comprehensive with the works of William Turner , Pierre Belon , Guillaume Rondelet , Conrad Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi .

Artists like Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci often worked together with naturalists and, in order to improve their work, were very interested in studies of the anatomy of humans and animals. They also studied physiological processes in detail, thus contributing to the growth of anatomical knowledge of their time. In the traditions of alchemy and natural magic , but especially in the work of Paracelsus , contemporary biological knowledge was received. The alchemists undertook chemical analyzes on organic materials and experimented with biological and mineral remedies . This process represents an excerpt from a larger development, in the context of which the metaphor of “nature as an organism” has been replaced by the concept of “nature as a machine”. The emergence of a mechanistic world view in the course of the 17th century accompanied this process.

17th and 18th centuries

In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists were occupied with the classification , naming and ordering of biological objects. Carolus Linnaeus published a basic taxonomy of the natural world in 1735 . In the 1750s, he devised a scientific naming scheme for all species. While Linnaeus regarded biological species as unchangeable parts of an order of creation, the other great naturalist of the 18th century, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon , regarded species as constructs. He saw life forms as mutable and even considered the possibility of a theory of descent . Although Buffon rejected evolution, he is a key figure in the history of evolution and influenced the evolutionary theories of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Charles Darwin .

The baroque age was the time of voyages of discovery. With these, describing new species and collecting artifacts became a passion for lay scholars and a profitable business for aspiring citizens. Many naturalists circled the globe in search of adventure and scientific knowledge.

Artifacts from organisms from all over the world were collected in chambers of curiosities like those of Olaus Wormius . They thus became centers of biological knowledge in the early modern period. Before the Age of Discovery , naturalists had no idea of ​​the diversity of biological phenomena.

William Harvey and other natural philosophers studied the function of blood and blood vessels by extending the work of Vesalius through experiments on living organisms (animals and humans). Harvey's De motu cordis from 1628 marks the end of Galen's theories. Together with Santorio Santorio's work on metabolism, they became an influential model for quantitative physiological studies.

In the early 17th century, the microcosm of biology became accessible for study. In the late 16th century the first simple light microscopes were built and Robert Hooke published his groundbreaking work Micrographia from 1665, which is based on examinations with a reflected light microscope he designed . With the improvement of lens production by Leeuwenhoeks in the 1670s, single-lens microscopes with a magnification of over 200 times and a good display quality became possible. Scholars discovered sperm , bacteria , infusoria and were able to open up the whole diversity of the microscopic world. Similar research by Jan Swammerdam led to an increased interest in entomology . He improved the basic techniques for microscopic preparations and tissue staining .

In Micrographia , Robert Hooke introduced the term cell to refer to small biological structures such as cork cambium . At the end of the 19th century, cell theory defined the cell as the smallest biological unit.

As the microscopic world grew, the macroscopic world shrank. Botanists like John Ray tried to classify the flood of newly discovered organisms brought in from all over the world and to bring them into conformity with natural theology . Discussions about the Flood fueled the development of paleontology . In 1669 Nicolaus Steno published an essay in which he described how the remains of organisms are deposited in sediments and mineralize into fossils . Although Steno's ideas about the formation of fossils became widely known and widely discussed among naturalists, until the late 18th century many scholars questioned the assumption of an organic origin of fossils based on philosophical and theological assumptions about the age of the earth and the process of the Extinction of biological species.

The 19th century: the emergence of biology as a natural science

Throughout the 19th century, the field of activity of the emerging biological science was limited on the one hand by medicine, which dealt with the problems of physiology. On the other hand, natural history occupied the field of research into the diversity of living things and the interactions of living things with one another and between living things and inanimate nature. Around 1900 these two areas of research overlapped and natural history and its counterpart, natural philosophy, gave rise to specialized biological disciplines: cell biology , bacteriology , morphology (biology) , embryology , geography and geology .

During his travels, Alexander von Humboldt recorded the distribution of different plant species in geographical regions and at the same time noted physical parameters such as temperature and air pressure.

Natural history and natural philosophy

In the first half of the 19th century, well-traveled naturalists brought a wealth of new knowledge about the diversity and distribution of living things to Europe. The work of Alexander von Humboldt , who explored the relationships between living things and their environment - which has traditionally been the subject of natural history - by using the quantitative methods of physics and chemistry , which was previously the domain of natural philosophy , received particular attention . This is how Humboldt founded biogeography .

Geology and paleontology

The newly emerging geology contributed to the convergence of the traditional disciplines of natural history and natural philosophy. The stratigraphic investigation of sediment layers made it possible to deduce their temporal occurrence from the spatial distribution of finds. This became a key concept in the emerging theory of evolution. Georges Cuvier and his contemporaries made great strides in comparative anatomy and paleontology at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries . In a series of lectures and publications, Cuvier demonstrated by comparing ancient mammals and fossils that fossils are the remains of extinct species and not the remains of organisms still living today, which was the common assumption at the time.

The fossils discovered and described by Gideon Mantell , William Buckland , Mary Anning, and Richard Owen support the finding that there was an "age of reptiles " that preceded that of prehistoric mammals. These discoveries attracted the public and drew scholars' attention to the question of the history of life on earth . Most geologists still considered the assumptions of catastrophism for the development of the earth and its living beings to be plausible. It was not until Charles Lyell's influential Principles of Geology (1830) that catastrophism was overcome and Hutton's theory of actualism popularized.

Evolution and biogeography

Charles Darwin's earliest notes on an evolutionary tree diagram from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species (1837)

The most important evolutionary theory before Darwin was that of the French scholar Jean-Baptiste Lamarck . The concept of inheritance of acquired traits - an inheritance mechanism that was considered plausible by many scientists up until the 20th century - envisaged a development of living things from the simplest unicellular organisms to humans.

By combining Humboldt's biogeographical approach, Lyell's geology, Thomas Malthus ' insights into population growth and his own morphological knowledge, the British naturalist Charles Darwin developed a theory of evolution with the central assumption of natural selection . Alfred Russel Wallace took a similar approach , who came to the same conclusions independently of Darwin. The publication of Darwin's theory in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life is often viewed as a pivotal event in the history of modern biology.

Darwin's recognition as a naturalist, the factual tone of his presentation, and the persuasiveness of his arguments led to his work being successful where other evolutionary work, such as the anonymously written Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , had failed. Most scientists were convinced of the concepts of evolution and the theory of descent by the late 19th century . Natural selection as the motor of evolution was doubted by many until the 20th century, since most contemporary ideas about genetics did not seem compatible with the inheritance of random variations.

Building on the work of de Candolle , Humboldt and Darwin, Wallace made important contributions to geozoology . Since he was interested in the transmutation hypothesis, he placed great emphasis on the description of the geographical occurrence of closely related species on his research trips to South America and the Malay archipelago . During his stay in the archipelago, he discovered the Wallace Line , which runs through the Spice Islands and divides the fauna of the archipelago between an Asian and an Australian - New Guinea zone. In his opinion, the question of the reasons why the fauna of islands with such a similar climate is so different can only be answered by clarifying the origins of the island's settlement. In 1876 he wrote The Geographical Distribution of Animals , which became the standard textbook in biogeography for over half a century. In the expansion Island Life of 1880 he dealt extensively with the biogeographical conditions on islands. He extended Philip Lutley Sclater's six-zone system , which described the geographic distribution of bird species , to all animal species. By listing their distribution areas quantitatively, he was able to highlight the uneven distribution of animal species. Evolution provided a rational explanation for his observations, which no researcher before him has done in this way.

Scientific research into the processes of inheritance experienced rapid growth after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species through the work of Francis Galton and biometrics . The origins of genetics are usually traced back to the work of the monk Gregor Mendel , after whom the Mendelian rules are named. However, his contributions were forgotten for 35 years. In the meantime, various theories about heredity based on ideas about pangenesis or orthogenesis have been discussed and explored. Embryology and ecology also became central biological disciplines that are related to evolution and were popularized primarily by Ernst Haeckel . Most of the research on heredity in the 19th century did not arise in connection with natural history, but with experimental physiology.

physiology

In the course of the 19th century, the subject area of ​​physiology expanded considerably. A predominantly medical field became a broad field of research in which physical and chemical processes of the phenomena of life were examined. The metaphor “living beings are machines” has thus become a paradigm in biological - and sociological - thinking.

Cell theory, embryology and germ theory

Innovative glass devices and experimental methods were developed by Louis Pasteur and other biologists and enriched the young research field of bacteriology in the late 19th century.

Advances in microscopy have had a major impact on biological thinking. In the early 19th century, a number of scholars devoted themselves to studying cells . From the years 1838/39 Schleiden and Schwann published their ideas about the meaning of the cell: cells are the basic unit of organisms and they carry all the characteristics of life . However, both believed that the idea that cells arise from other cells through division was wrong. Only through the work of Robert Remak and Rudolf Virchow were all biologists convinced of the three basic assumptions of the cell theory from 1860 onwards .

The findings of cell theory led biologists to view organisms as being composed of individual cells. Due to the progress in the development of ever better microscopes (especially by Ernst Abbe ) and new staining methods , it soon became clear to scientists in the field of cell biology that the cells themselves are more than liquid-filled chambers. Robert Brown first described the nucleus in 1831 and by the end of the 19th century cytologists were familiar with many of the key components of the cell, such as chromosomes , centrosomes , mitochondria , chloroplasts, and other structures that could be visualized by staining. Between 1874 and 1884 Walther Flemming described the different stages of mitosis and showed that they were not artifacts caused by staining methods , but also occur in living cells. He was also able to show that shortly before the cell divides, the number of chromosomes doubles. August Weismann combined the research on cell reproduction with his findings on heredity. He described the cell nucleus - and especially the chromosomes - as the carrier of the genetic material, differentiated between somatic cells and primordial germ cells , demanded that the number of chromosomes in a germ cell must be halved and thus formulated the concept of meiosis . In this way he refuted the Pangenesis theory advocated by Darwin . Weismann's concept of the germline was particularly influential in the field of embryology.

In the mid-1850s was the miasma theory of disease development largely through the germ theory replaced the pathogenesis. This aroused great interest among scientists in microorganisms and their relationship to other life forms. Mainly through the work of Robert Koch , who developed the methods for growing bacteria in Petri dishes with agar-containing nutrient medium , bacteriology became an independent discipline around 1880. The long-standing idea, which goes back above all to Aristotle, that organisms could simply arise from dead matter through spontaneous generation , was refuted by Louis Pasteur through a series of experiments. Nevertheless, the debate on the question of vitalism and mechanistic ideas that had existed since Aristotle continued.

The beginning of organic chemistry and experimental physiology

For chemists, the distinction between organic and inorganic substances became a central issue in the 19th century. It mainly concerned processes of organic transformation during fermentation and putrefaction . These have been viewed as biological or vital processes since Aristotle . Building on Lavoisier's work, Friedrich Wöhler , Justus von Liebig and other pioneers in this research area showed that organic processes could be investigated using common physical and chemical methods. In 1829 Wöhler succeeded in the inorganic synthesis of urea. He thus questioned the presuppositions of vitalism. With the production of cell extracts, like diastase in 1833 , it became possible to accelerate chemical processes. The concept of the enzyme was established at the end of the 19th century , but the processes involved in enzyme kinetics were not understood until the early 20th century . Physiologists such as Claude Bernard used vivisection and other experimental methods to investigate the chemical and physical functions of living beings to an extent previously unknown. They thus laid the foundations for a deeper understanding of biomechanics , nutrition and digestion and the prerequisites for the development of endocrinology , a field that grew rapidly with the discovery of hormones and secretin in 1902. The importance and variety of experimental physiological methods in biology and medicine increased steadily in the 19th century, the control of life processes was recognized as a central task in these disciplines and experiments soon played a decisive role in biological education.

Behavioral research

Apparatus for conditioning pigeons with the help of a Skinner box

The forerunners of the modern biology of behavior are the observations of animals by physical theologians as well as the representatives of animal psychology at the end of the 19th century, “who described the variety of species-specific behaviors when looking for partners, building nests and brood care, their differentiated drives (natural and artificial instincts) and their different learning abilities. “In addition to the descriptive and comparative-empirical animal psychology, there was also an experimental direction, called psychophysiology , which followed on from stimulus and sensory physiology and to which u. a. Max Verworn's psychophysiological protist studies of 1889 and the studies of Iwan Petrovich Pavlov , the discoverer of the principle of classical conditioning , count.

The establishment of behavioral research , however, was made as a special discipline of zoology in the first half of the 20th century, after "finally put mathematisation the facts call for objectivity of research methods in an increasing quantification, that is," in 1900 through continued the. An example of this new approach is Robert Yerkes' two-choice experimental set-up for learning experiments with animals (two-alley discrimination box), which was developed by Edward Lee Thorndike specifically to move away from prejudiced, anecdotal reports on the intelligence of animals Cage for carrying out learning experiments), the Pavlovian dogs and - especially in the USA - the concept of behaviorism . As an alternative to both the black box model of behaviorism and the often anthropomorphic animal psychology, Jakob Johann von Uexküll designed his environmental theoretical conception of animal behavior, in which he assumed "that not living beings are determined by the environment, but vice versa"; every organism forms "through its services its own living space which surrounds it - unnoticed by other organisms".

Behavioral biology achieved its breakthrough in the form of today's classic comparative behavioral research ( ethology ) from the 1930s onwards, in the sense of entering the faculties of universities , and it then experienced a diverse division into branches such as human ethology and biolinguistics , neuroethology and behavioral ecology , sociobiology and Evolutionary psychology .

Life Sciences in the 20th Century

Since the beginning of the 20th century, biological research has increasingly been the result of professional endeavors. Until then, most of the work was still being done in the field of natural history , where morphological and phylogenetic research took precedence over experimental causal research. However, the studies of anti- vitalistic oriented physiologists and embryologists became more and more influential. The great success of experimental approaches in the areas of development, heredity and metabolism at the beginning of the 20th century showed the explanatory power of biological experiments. This contributed to the fact that in the decades that followed, experimental work replaced natural history as the predominant research method.

The "German Biology" of the Nazi era

Biology was also exposed to ideological use during the Nazi era . This was how Hans Schemm the National Socialism "politically applied biology" and Änne Bäumer wrote to the tasks of biology heard Nazi ideology "to support biological knowledge and to confirm". The biology classes in schools were also used for this purpose.

The basis for the politicization of biology in the sense of the NSDAP was, on the one hand, the law for the restoration of the civil service in April 1933 , on the basis of which teachers of " non-Aryan descent " could be dismissed at schools and universities . On the other hand, the so-called leader principle was introduced at the German universities in autumn 1933 (see University under National Socialism ), which meant that the decision-making rights of the faculties in habilitation , promotion and appointment were transferred to the rector , who was not more elected, but was appointed by the Reich Minister of Education and was answerable to him alone. In the same way, the institutes of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science and the research community were brought into line , and institutions similar to the regime were created, such as the SS Institute for Plant Genetics and other institutes of the German Ahnenerbe Research Association . In the case of upcoming appointments of professors to a university, for example, the faculties could make suggestions, but the rector alone was responsible for which proposal he presented to the Reich Minister of Education. He also had to consult the " Deputy Leader " and, from 1941, the party chancellery under Martin Bormann before the ministry submitted its proposal to the Reich Chancellery , which made an appointment or appointment. As the science historian Ute Deichmann demonstrated in a study, this approach resulted in “party members receiving strong appointments.” Analogous to so-called German physics , u. a. the botanist Ernst Lehmann and the zoologist Otto Mangold to establish a "German biology", "as an apparently scientific legitimation of the Nazi ideology". In the field of botany, for example, breeding research and other studies on the extraction of proteins and fats from plants that are considered to be “vital to the war effort” were particularly funded. In the field of zoology u. a. Pest control projects funded and officially recognized as "vital to the war effort" after pests to health, homes and stored goods had become a growing problem. In the field of human genetics , for example, Günther Just in Würzburg tried to prove a connection between the pattern of fingerprints and hereditary mental illnesses .

Ecology and environmental sciences

In the early 20th century, naturalists were increasingly expected to use experimental methods more often. This is how ecology emerged as a combination of biogeography on the one hand and the concept of the biogeochemical cycle established by chemists . The biologists working in the field also developed quantitative methods such as the Qrat and learned to use laboratory instruments and cameras to differentiate their work more strongly from traditional natural history. Zoologists and botanists did everything they could to mitigate the unpredictable aspects of the living world by conducting laboratory experiments and studying semi-controlled natural environments such as gardens. New institutions like the Carnegie Station for Experimental Evolution and the Marine Biological Laboratory allowed scientists to use more controlled environments to study organisms and their entire life cycle.

The concept of ecological succession was invented by Henry Chandler Cowles and Frederic Edward Clements between 1900 and 1910 and was significant for early plant ecology. The Lotka-Volterra rules developed by Alfred J. Lotka and the predator-prey relationship that he first described mathematically, as well as the work of George Evelyn Hutchinsons on the biogeography and biogeochemical structure of lakes and rivers ( limnology ) and Charles Sutherland Elton's work on the food chain of Animals pioneered the introduction of quantitative methods in the field of ecological subdisciplines. Ecology became an independent discipline between 1940 and 1950, after Eugene P. Odum developed many concepts of ecosystem research and thus brought the relationships between different groups of organisms (especially matter and energy flows) into the focus of research.

When evolutionary biologists investigated the possibility of different units of selection in the 1960s, ecologists also turned to the theory of evolution. In population ecology the question was discussed whether there could be group selection . However, after 1970, most biologists believed that natural selection was seldom effective above the level of individual organisms. The ecology grew rapidly with the advent of environmental movements. As part of the International Biological Program (or comparable programs, such as the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in the White Mountain National Forest ), an attempt was finally made to introduce the methods of large-scale research that were so successful in physics into ecosystem research and thus to address environmental problems to bring the public focus. The formulation of generally applicable “ecological laws of nature” has remained a challenge to this day, unifying concepts such as B. the island biogeography but also here advanced the knowledge.

Classical genetics, synthetic theory, and evolutionary theory

Morgan's illustration of a crossing-over , an aspect of Mendel's chromosome theory of inheritance

Mendel was rediscovered in 1900: Hugo de Vries , Carl Correns and Erich Tschermak-Seysenegg discovered the Mendelian rules independently of one another , but these are not found in Mendel's work. Soon afterwards, cell researchers Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri declared that the chromosomes contained the genetic material. Between 1910 and 1915, Thomas Hunt Morgan and his students combined the controversial ideas on the “Mendelian chromosome theory of inheritance” in their “fly laboratory”. They noticed the connection between different genes. Through the process of crossing-over that they postulated (and later confirmed experimentally) they were able to explain the different strengths of this connection, which they called gene coupling . They concluded that the genes on the chromosomes must be lined up like "pearls on a string". The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster , her preferred test object, thus became a widely used model organism .

Hugo de Vries tried to combine the new genetics with the theory of evolution. He expanded his studies of hybridization into a theory of mutationism that found widespread acceptance in the early 20th century. The Lamarckism had as many followers. In contrast, Darwinism appeared to be incompatible with the seamlessly variable characteristics (such as body size) that were researched by biometricians . These traits were only partially believed to be hereditary. After Morgan's chromosome theory of inheritance prevailed between 1920 and 1930, population genetics was developed on the basis of the work of Ronald Aylmer Fisher , JBS Haldane and Sewall Wright , and along with the concepts of natural selection and Mendelian rules for synthetic The theory of evolution united. The notion of inheritance of acquired traits has been discarded by most scientists, and mutationism has been replaced by the new genetics.

In the second half of the 20th century, the concept of population genetics was applied to the new disciplines of behavioral science, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology . In the 1960s, developed William D. Hamilton game theoretic approaches to evolution from a theoretical perspective by kin selection to altruism to explain. Controversial debates about the presumed origin of higher organisms through endosymbiosis and the opposing concepts to molecular evolution, in particular about " egoistic genes ", which consider selection to be the main motor of evolution, on the one hand, and the neutral theory , which has made genetic drift a key mechanism , on the other have sparked an ongoing debate about the appropriate balance between adaptationism and chance in evolutionary theory.

In the 1970s, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge developed their theory of “ punctuated equilibrium ”. According to her, the so-called stasis - times in which no evolutionary change occurs - contributes to the majority of the fossil record, so that most evolutionary changes must occur quickly and in short periods of time. Around 1980 Luis Walter Alvarez and Walter Alvarez suggested that an impact was responsible for the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary . Around the same time, Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup published a statistical analysis of marine fossils, highlighting the importance of mass extinctions in the history of life on earth.

Biochemistry, microbiology, and molecular biology

At the end of the 19th century, all important mechanisms of drug metabolism had been researched and the main features of protein synthesis, fatty acid metabolism and urea synthesis were known. Vitamins were isolated and synthesized in the first decades of the 20th century . Improved laboratory methods such as chromatography and electrophoresis led to rapid advances in physiological chemistry, a discipline that, as biochemistry, emancipated itself from its medical origins. Between 1920 and 1930, biochemists such as Hans Krebs , Carl and Gerty Cori began to research the central metabolic pathways of all organisms: the citric acid cycle , glycogen synthesis , glycolysis and the synthesis of steroids and porphyrins . Between 1930 and 1950 Fritz Lipmann and other scientists discovered the role of adenosine triphosphate as a universal energy carrier and mitochondria as the cell's powerhouse. This traditional form of biochemical research continued with great success throughout the 20th century.

The origins of molecular biology

Wendell Stanley's successful attempts to crystallize tobacco mosaic virus as a pure nucleoprotein in 1935 made a compelling contribution to the assumption that the issues of inheritance could be traced back entirely to physical and chemical processes.

The " central dogma of molecular biology " (originally "dogma" was meant more as fun) was proposed by Francis Crick in 1958. This drawing is Crick's reconstruction of his ideas on the so-called central dogma. The solid lines are intended to indicate the (1958) secured path of information flow, the broken lines hypothetical information flows.

Due to the success of classical genetics, many biologists and a number of well-known physicists turned to the question of the nature of genes. The Head of Research at the Rockefeller Foundation , Warren Weaver , supported this interest by donating research funds to develop physical and chemical methods of study for fundamental biological problems. He created the term molecular biology for it in 1938 . Weaver was very successful with this approach, with many significant research achievements funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s and 1940s.

Similar to biochemistry, the sub-disciplines of bacteriology and virology (later combined to form microbiology ) , which are located in the field of tension between biology and medicine, experienced rapid progress in the early 20th century. Félix Hubert d'Hérelles' isolation of the bacteriophages during the First World War enabled many insights into the genetics of phages and bacteria.

The use of special model organisms was decisive for the development of molecular genetics . They made experiments more controllable and standardized results easier to obtain. After successful work with Drosophila and maize , the discovery of simple model organisms such as the slime mold Neurospora crassa made studying the relationship between genetics and biochemistry much easier. This allowed Tatum and Beadle in 1941 to set up the well-known “ one-gene-one-enzyme hypothesis ”. The experiments on tobacco mosaic viruses and bacteriophages , which were carried out for the first time with the help of an electron microscope and ultracentrifuge , forced the scientists to rethink the concept of life. The fact that the bacterial viruses are nucleoproteins that multiply independently without the help of a cell nucleus called the widely accepted Mendelian chromosome theory of inheritance into question.

In 1943, Oswald Avery showed that the genetic material contained in chromosomes was more DNA than protein, a fact that was confirmed in 1952 in the Hershey-Chase experiment , a work by the so-called phage group around Max Delbrück . In 1953 , knowing the work of Rosalind Franklin, James D. Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double helix model of DNA. In their famous work " Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid " , Watson and Crick noted awkwardly: "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."

After the Meselson-Stahl experiment of 1958 had confirmed the concept of semiconservative replication of DNA, it was clear that the sequence of bases in a DNA strand somehow determines the amino acid sequence of proteins. Therefore, the physicist George Gamow proposed a fixed genetic code that would have to connect protein and DNA sequences. Between 1953 and 1961 only a few DNA or amino acid sequences were known, but there were all the more proposals for a code system. The situation was compounded by the increasing knowledge of the mediating role of RNA . In fact, a large number of experiments were necessary to finally decipher the genetic code, which Nirenberg and Khorana succeeded in 1961–1966.

The expansion of the molecular biological paradigm

At the end of the 1950s, in addition to the Biology Department at Caltech , the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (and its predecessors) at Cambridge University, the Pasteur Institute developed into a focus of molecular biology research. The scientists at Cambridge, especially Max Perutz and John Kendrew , concentrated on structural biology by combining crystal structure analyzes and molecular modeling and using computer-aided analyzes of the data obtained. They benefited directly and indirectly from the military research funding. Some biochemists around Frederick Sanger came to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and began to combine functional and structural aspects in the study of biological macromolecules . At the Pasteur Institute, François Jacob and Jacques Monod (biologist) developed the concept of gene regulation in bacteria as a result of the so-called PaJaMo experiment . Her investigations into the lac operon led to the elucidation of the role of messenger RNA in gene expression. Thus, by the mid-1960s, the conceptual core of molecular biology as a model of the molecular basis of metabolism and reproduction was essentially complete.

Although molecular biology is a field of research that had only been conceptually consolidated a few years earlier, substantial financial allocations in the late 1950s and early 1970s enabled intensive growth in research and institutionalization of molecular biology. Because the methods of molecular biology spread rapidly just like their users and so over time dominated institutions and entire sub-disciplines, which led to considerable conflicts with other scientists, the biologist Edward O. Wilson coined the term The Molecular Wars. The "molecularization" of biology led to significant advances in genetics , immunology, and neurobiology . At the same time, the idea that life is determined by a “genetic program” - a concept that Jacob and Monod adopted from the emerging research field of cybernetics and computer science - became an influential paradigm in all of biology. Immunology, in particular, was subsequently strongly influenced by molecular biology and had an impact on it: the clone selection theory , which was developed by Niels Kaj Jerne and Frank Macfarlane Burnet in the mid-1950s, helped to improve the understanding of the mechanisms of Improve protein synthesis .

Resistance to the growing influence of molecular biology was particularly great in evolutionary biology . The elucidation of protein sequences is of great importance for quantitative studies in evolution due to the molecular clock hypothesis . There was a dispute between leading evolutionary biologists such as George Gaylord Simpson and Ernst Mayr and molecular biologists such as Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl about the importance of selection and the continuous or discontinuous course of evolutionary changes. In 1973, Theodosius Dobzhansky coined the attitude of organismic evolutionary biologists against the threatening dominance of molecular biology with the sentence "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution". With Motoo Kimura's publication of his work on the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968, the dilemma was resolved. Kimura suggested that natural selection is not the sole force in all evolutionary processes. At the molecular level, most changes are selectively neutral and are more likely to be driven by random processes (drift). Molecular methods have been firmly anchored in evolutionary biology since the early 1970s. With the invention of DNA sequencing methods by Allan Maxam, Walter Gilbert and Fred Sanger , the focus shifted from processing proteins and immunological methods to gene sequencing. Since the beginning of the 1990s, DNA family trees have revolutionized the research of processes of descent and are now routine tools in the phylogenetic system . The history of descent and kinship, and thus also the systematics, of all organisms has since been determined in roughly equal proportions by the study of DNA and morphology.

Biotechnology, genetic engineering and genomics

Carefully engineered strains of Escherichia coli are among the most widely used “workhorses” in biotechnology and other biological research areas.

The biotechnology in the strict sense is an important part of biology since the end of the 19th century. In the course of the industrialization of breweries and agriculture , biologists and chemists became aware of the extraordinary possibilities that arise when biological processes are controlled by humans. In particular, progress in the field of industrial fermentation provided the chemical industry with a cornucopia of new possibilities. Numerous new biotechnological manufacturing processes have been developed since the 1970s. These enabled the manufacture of products as diverse as drugs from penicillin to steroids , foods like chlorella , fuels like ethanol fuel, and a variety of high-yielding hybrid varieties and new agricultural technologies as part of the green revolution .

Recombinant DNA Technologies

Biotechnology in the modern sense of genetic engineering emerged in the 1970s with the invention of recombinant DNA technologies. The discovery and characterization of restriction enzymes by Werner Arber followed the isolation and synthesis of viral genes. Herbert Boyer isolated the restriction enzyme EcoRI and Arthur Kornberg the DNA ligases . Building on this preliminary work, Paul Berg succeeded in producing the first transgenic organisms in 1972 . The use of plasmid - vectors allowed then genes for antibiotic resistance in bacteria install, greatly improved the efficiency of Kloningexperimenten.

Aware of the potential dangers (in particular the feared spread of cancer-causing genes by recombinant bacteria), scientists and a large number of critics reacted not only with enthusiasm about the new possibilities, but also with fears and calls for restrictions. For this reason, leading molecular biologists working with Paul Berg supported a research moratorium that was supported by most scientists until guidelines for the safe handling of genetically modified organisms were agreed at the Asilomar conference in 1975 . According to Asilomar, the new genetic methods were further improved very quickly. Frederick Sanger and Walter Gilbert independently developed two different DNA sequencing methods . Methods for oligonucleotide synthesis and methods for incorporating DNA into cells were also available in a short time.

Effective processes for gene expression in transgenic organisms were also soon learned (at universities and in industry) and these were used to produce human hormones in bacteria. However, it soon became clear that the difficulties involved were greater than had initially been assumed. Starting in 1977, Eukaryotic Gene realized introns contain, can be so patched and therefore after the transcription of a splicing is necessary for the cell from the messenger RNA , a protein can be produced. The enzyme systems necessary for this do not exist in bacteria, which is why genomic DNA cannot be used for gene expression of human genes in bacteria, but cDNA libraries have to be produced. The race to produce human insulin in bacteria was won by Genentech . With this success the so-called biotech boom began and with it on the one hand the era of biopatents and a previously not considered possible amalgamation of biological research, industrial production and legislation.

Molecular Systematics and Genomics

Top view of a thermal cycler with 48 sample cells for the polymerase chain reaction

By the early 1980s, protein sequencing had already revolutionized the methods of scientific classification of organisms (especially cladistics). Soon, biologists also began to look at RNA and DNA sequences as phenotypic traits. This expanded the importance of the research field of molecular evolution in evolutionary biology, since one could now compare the results of the molecular systematics with the findings of the traditional evolutionary pedigrees on the basis of the morphology. The ideas of Lynn Margulis on the endosymbiotic theory (the assumption that the organelles of eukaryotic cells descend from free-living prokaryotic organisms through symbiosis) paved the way for a new classification of the family tree of the organisms. In the 1990s, the assumption of five realms of living things (animals, plants, fungi, protists and moners) was replaced by the concept of three realms ( archaea , bacteria and eukaryotes ). The trisection is based on a proposal by Carl Woeses pioneering work in molecular systematics on the basis of the sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA . The development and widespread use of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the mid-1980s by Kary Mullis and others of Cetus Corp. marked another turning point in the history of modern biotechnology. It made DNA analysis much easier. Combined with the use of Expressed Sequence Tags , PCR studies led to the discovery of many more genes than would have been possible using traditional methods and opened up the possibility of sequencing entire genomes.

With the discovery of the homeobox gene, first in the case of the fruit fly and then in other animals, including humans, it became clear to what extent the morphogenesis of organisms follows similar rules and laws. This discovery led to a wealth of new knowledge in developmental biology and a deeper understanding of how body plans evolved in the animal kingdom.

The Human Genome Project - the largest and most expensive biological research project ever undertaken - started in 1988 under the leadership of James D. Watson after preliminary projects on simple organisms such as E. coli , S. cerevisiae and C. elegans had been successful. Using shotgun sequencing and gene isolation techniques developed by Craig Venter , Celera Genomics launched a privately funded competition to the government-sponsored Human Genome Project . The competition ended in 2000 with a compromise in which both teams presented their results of sequencing the entire human genome at the same time.

The life sciences in the 21st century

At the beginning of the 21st century, the biological disciplines were merged with biophysics , a previously separate separation from physics and biology. Here advances were made in the development of novel methods from the field of analytical chemistry and physics, which have now been applied in biology. These include improved sensors, optical methods, biomarkers, signal processors, robots, measuring instruments and significant improvements in the field of computer-aided analysis and storage of digitized data, the visualization of spectroscopic and sequence data and the simulation of processes in the computer. Experimental procedures as well as theoretical investigations, data collections and publications on the Internet benefited from this, especially in the areas of molecular biochemistry and ecosystem research. This made it possible for researchers all over the world to work together on theoretical models, complex computer simulations, computer-aided predictions for experimental procedures and global data collections and to review and jointly publish the results in open peer-review processes. New fields of research emerged through the amalgamation of previously separate disciplines, as in the case of bioinformatics , theoretical biology , evolutionary developmental biology , computer genomics , astrobiology and synthetic biology .

Used literature

• Garland E. Allen: Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1978, ISBN 0-691-08200-6 .
• Garland E. Allen: Life Science in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1975.
• Julia Annas: Classical Greek Philosophy. In: John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, Oswyn Murray (Eds.): The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press, New York 1986, ISBN 0-19-872112-9 .
• Jonathan Barnes: Hellenistic Philosophy and Science. In: John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, Oswyn Murray (Eds.): The Oxford History of the Classical World. Oxford University Press, New York 1986, ISBN 0-19-872112-9 .
• Peter J. Bowler: The Earth Encompassed: A History of the Environmental Sciences. WW Norton & Company , New York 1992, ISBN 0-393-32080-4 .
• Peter J. Bowler: The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1983, ISBN 0-8018-2932-1 .
• Peter J. Bowler: Evolution: The History of an Idea. University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-23693-9 .
• Janet Browne: The Secular Ark: Studies in the History of Biogeography. Yale University Press, New Haven 1983, ISBN 0-300-02460-6 .
• Robert Bud: The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology. Cambridge University Press, London 1993, ISBN 0-521-38240-8 .
• John Caldwell: Drug metabolism and pharmacogenetics: the British contribution to fields of international significance. In: British Journal of Pharmacology . Vol. 147, Issue S1, January 2006, pp. S89-S99.
• William Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and Transformation. Cambridge University Press, New York 1977, ISBN 0-521-29293-X .
• Angela NH Creager: The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002, ISBN 0-226-12025-2 .
• Angela NH Creager: Building Biology across the Atlantic. In: Journal of the History of Biology. Vol. 36, No. 3, September 2003, pp. 579-589 (essay review).
• Soraya de Chadarevian: Designs for Life: Molecular Biology after World War II. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-57078-6 .
• Michael R. Dietrich: Paradox and Persuasion: Negotiating the Place of Molecular Evolution within Evolutionary Biology. In: Journal of the History of Biology. Vol. 31, 1998, pp. 85-111.
• Kevin Davies: Cracking the Genome: Inside the Race to Unlock Human DNA. The Free Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0-7432-0479-4 .
• Joseph S. Fruton Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: The Interplay of Chemistry and Biology. Yale University Press, New Haven 1999, ISBN 0-300-07608-8 .
• Herbert Gottweis: Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the United States. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1998, ISBN 0-262-07189-4 .
• Stephen Jay Gould : The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-674-00613-5 .
• Joel B. Hagen: An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1992, ISBN 0-8135-1824-5 .
• Stephen S. Hall: Invisible Frontiers: The Race to Synthesize a Human Gene. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87113-147-1 .
• Frederic Lawrence Holmes: Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA: A History of "The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology". Yale University Press, New Haven 2001, ISBN 0-300-08540-0 .
• Thomas Junker: History of Biology. CH Beck, Munich 2004.
• Lily E. Kay: The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology. Oxford University Press, New York 1993, ISBN 0-19-511143-5 .
• Robert E. Kohler: Lords of the Fly: "Drosophila" Genetics and the Experimental Life. Chicago University Press, Chicago 1994, ISBN 0-226-45063-5 .
• Robert E. Kohler: Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002, ISBN 0-226-45009-0 .
• Sheldon Krimsky: Biotechnics and Society: The Rise of Industrial Genetics. Praeger Publishers, New York 1991, ISBN 0-275-93860-3 .
• Edward J. Larson : Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. The Modern Library, New York 2004, ISBN 0-679-64288-9 .
• James Lennox: Aristotle's Biology . In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . February 15, 2006, revised July 27, 2011
• Arthur O. Lovejoy : The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Harvard University Press, 1936; Reprint: 1982, ISBN 0-674-36153-9
• Lois N. Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. 3. Edition. Marcel Dekker, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8247-0824-5 .
• Stephen F. Mason: A History of the Sciences. Collier Books, New York 1956.
• Ernst Mayr : The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1982, ISBN 0-674-36445-7 .
• Ernst W. Mayr, William B. Provine (Eds.): The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-674-27226-9 .
• Michel Morange: A History of Molecular Biology. Translation by Matthew Cobb. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-674-39855-6 .
• Anson Rabinbach : The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. University of California Press, 1992, ISBN 0-520-07827-6 .
• Paul Rabinow : Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1996, ISBN 0-226-70146-8 .
• Martin JS Rudwick : The Meaning of Fossils. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1972, ISBN 0-226-73103-0 .
• Peter Raby: Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travelers. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1997, ISBN 0-691-04843-6 .
• Sheila M. Rothman & David J. Rothman: The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement. Vintage Books, New York 2003, ISBN 0-679-75835-6 .
• Jan Sapp: Genesis: The Evolution of Biology. Oxford University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-19-515618-8 .
• James A. Secord: Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 0-226-74410-8 .
• Anthony Serafini: The Epic History of Biology. Perseus Publishing, 1993.
• Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis: Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996, ISBN 0-691-03343-9 .
• John Sulston : The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics and the Human Genome. National Academy Press, 2002, ISBN 0-309-08409-1 .
• William C. Summers Felix d'Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Yale University Press, New Haven 1999, ISBN 0-300-07127-2 .
• Alfred Sturtevant : A History of Genetics . Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor 2001, ISBN 0-87969-607-9 .
• Arnold Thackray (Ed.): Private Science: Biotechnology and the Rise of the Molecular Sciences. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1998, ISBN 0-8122-3428-6 .
• Georg Toepfer: Historical dictionary of biology. History and theory of basic biological concepts. 3 volumes. Metzler, Stuttgart 2011.
• Ludwig Trepl : History of Ecology. From the 17th century to the present. Athenaeum, Frankfurt / M. 1987.
• Edward O. Wilson : Naturalist. Island Press, 1994.
• Carl Zimmer : Evolution: the triumph of an idea. HarperCollins, New York 2001, ISBN 0-06-113840-1 .

Further literature

• Änne Bäumer : History of Biology . 3 volumes. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Bern / New York / Paris / Vienna 1991–1996.
• Ute Deichmann : Biologists under Hitler. Displacement, careers, research. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 978-3-593-34763-9 .
• Ilse Jahn : history of biology . 3rd revised and expanded edition. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg / Berlin 2000, ISBN 978-3-8274-1023-8 .
• Thomas Junker : History of Biology. The science of life . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 978-3-406-50834-9 .
• George Juraj Stein: Biological Science and the Roots of Nazism. In: American Scientist. Volume 76, No. 1, 1988, pp. 50-58.

See also

• Journal of the History of Biology

Web links

• International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology
• History of Biology
• History of Biology
• Miall, LC (1911) History of biology

Individual evidence

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3. ↑ Junker: History of Biology. P. 8.
4. ^ Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Pp. 1-2.
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6. ^ Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Pp. 1-3.
7. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. Pp. 2-3.
8. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. Pp. 3-9.
9. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. P. 8.
10. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. P. 4.
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46. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 91–94: "When it comes to biology as a whole, it wasn't until the late 18th and early 19th centuries that universities became centers of biological research."
47. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 94-95, pp. 154-158.
48. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 166-171.
49. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. Pp. 80-83.
50. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. Pp. 90-97.
51. Jump up ↑ Merchant, The Death of Nature , Chapters 1, 4, and 8
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53. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Chapter 7
54. ↑ See Raby, Bright Paradise
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56. ^ Magner: A History of the Life Sciences. Pp. 133-144.
57. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 162-166.
58. ↑ Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils , pp. 41-93.
59. ↑ Bowler, The Earth Encompassed , pp 204-211.
60. ↑ Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils , pp. 112-113.
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62. ↑ Bowler, The Earth Encompassed , pp 237-247.
63. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 343-357.
64. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Chapter 10: "Darwin's evidence for evolution and common descent"; and Chapter 11: “The causation of evolution: natural selection”; Larson, Evolution , chapter 3
65. ↑ Larson, Evolution , Chapter 5: Ascent of Evolutionism. see also: Bowler: The Eclipse of Darwinism. ; Secord, Victorian sensation
66. ↑ Larson, Evolution , pp. 72-73 and 116-117; see also: Browne, The Secular Ark .
67. ^ Bowler: Evolution: The History of an Idea. P. 174.
68. ↑ Mayr: The Growth of Biological Thought. Pp. 693-710.
69. ^ Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Chapter 6; on the machine metaphor, see also: Rabinbach, The Human Motor
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71. ↑ Sapp, Genesis , chapter 7; Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Chapter 2
72. ↑ Sapp, Genesis , chapter 8; Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Chapter 3
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74. ↑ Fruton, Proteins, Enzymes, Genes , Chapter 4; Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Chapter 6
75. ↑ Rothman and Rothman, The Pursuit of Perfection , Chapter 1; Coleman: Biology in the Nineteenth Century. Chapter 7
76. ↑ Ilse Jahn and Ulrich Sucker: The development of behavioral biology. In: Ilse Jahn (Ed.): History of Biology. 2nd corrected special edition of the 3rd edition. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin 2002, p. 580, ISBN 3-8274-1023-1 .
77. ↑ Ilse Jahn, Ulrich Sucker: The development of behavioral biology. P. 585.
78. ^ Robert Yerkes : The Dancing Mouse. A Study in Animal Behavior. Macmillan, New York 1907. See in particular the illustration on p. 211.
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80. ↑ Ilse Jahn, Ulrich Sucker: The development of behavioral biology. P. 587.
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84. ↑ Änne Bäumer : The politicization of biology at the time of National Socialism. In: Biology in Our Time. Volume 19, No. 3, 1989, pp. 76–80, doi: 10.1002 / biuz.19890190304
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85. ↑ Änne Bäumer-Schleinkofer: Biology lessons in the Third Reich. Nazi biology and school. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / New York 1992, ISBN 978-3-631-45047-5 .
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86. ↑ Ute Deichmann : Biologists under Hitler. Displacement, careers, research. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 978-3-593-34763-9 , p. 30.
87. ↑ Ute Deichmann, Biologen under Hitler , p. 229.
88. ↑ Ute Deichmann, Biologen under Hitler , p. 232.
89. ↑ Änne Bäumer: Nazi biology. Hirzel / Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 978-3-8047-1127-3 , p. 111.
90. ↑ Ute Deichmann, Biologen under Hitler , pp. 84, 103 and 114.
91. ↑ Kohler: Landscapes and Labs capes. Chapters 2 to 4.
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96. ^ TH Morgan, AH Sturtevant, HJ Muller, CB Bridges (1915) The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity Henry Holt and Company.
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103. ↑ Caldwell, "Drug metabolism and pharmacogenetics"; Fruton, Proteins, Enzymes, Genes , Chapter 7
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110. ↑ Morange, A History of Molecular Biology , Chapters 3, 4, 11, and 12; Fruton, Proteins, Enzymes, Genes , Chapter 8; on the Meselson-Stahl experiment, see: Holmes, Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA
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115. ↑ Morange: A History of Molecular Biology. Chapter 14.
116. ^ Wilson: Naturalist. Chapter 12; Morange: A History of Molecular Biology. Chapter 15.
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118. ↑ Morange: A History of Molecular Biology. Pp. 126-132, 213-214.
119. ^ Theodosius Dobzhansky : Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution. In: The American Biology Teacher. Volume 35, No. 3, 1973, pp. 125–129, full text (PDF)
120. ↑ Dietrich: Paradox and Persuasion. Pp. 100-111.
121. ^ Bud: The Uses of Life. Chapters 2 and 6.
122. ↑ Morange, A History of Molecular Biology. Chapters 15 and 16.
123. ↑ Tom Maniatis : Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual
124. ^ Bud, The Uses of Life , Chapter 8; Gottweis, Governing Molecules , chapter 3; Morange, A History of Molecular Biology. Chapter 16.
125. ↑ Morange, A History of Molecular Biology , Chapter 16
126. ↑ Morange, A History of Molecular Biology , Chapter 17th
127. ^ Krimsky: Biotechnics and Society. Chapter 2; on the race for insulin, see: Hall: Invisible Frontiers. see also: Thackray (Ed.): Private Science.
128. ↑ Sapp, Genesis , Chapters 18 and 19
129. ↑ Morange: A History of Molecular Biology. Chapter 20; see also: Rabinow: Making PCR.
130. ^ Gould: The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Chapter 10
131. ↑ Davies: Cracking the Genome. Preface; see also: Sulston: The Common Thread.

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