Dissertation Research: Vertebrate Paleontology and the Evolutionary Synthesis

从1870年到1930年，脊椎动物古生物学在阐明达尔文的自然选择进化论细节的科学中享有中心地位。在接下来的20年里，所谓的进化生物学的“现代综合”，脊椎动物古生物学转移到学科的边缘，现在绕着染色体遗传学和理论种群遗传学。现存的脊椎动物古生物学历史似乎接受了这一学科的生命周期：极少数冒险进入20世纪的历史在1940年之前就结束了。相反，新兴领域获得了“起源神话”，科学家和历史学家都对其进行了讲述、辩论、提炼和研究。本基金支持的论文研究是支持生物学历史论文的最后阶段工作。该项目有三个目标。首先，它是一个实证项目，将恢复1900年至1950年间美国脊椎动物古生物学的历史。其次，这项研究将考虑科学家在为自己的学科在其他学科中奠定地位的过程中所扮演的角色。第三，该项目将考虑从“局外人”学科的角度对进化综合进行新描述所固有的史学问题。一门科学的边缘化及其当前的历史如何与描述这一运动完成的过去时刻的计划联系在一起？在这项资助下进行的研究包括对科学家和历史学家的采访，他们对我们理解脊椎动物古生物学在进化综合中的地位做出了贡献。其中许多人已经到了退休年龄，甚至更老；在合成过程中，少数能提供“目击”事件的人对这项研究是无价的。来自这些对话的信息和观点将与使用第一手和第二手材料完成的研究相结合。这些科学家的看法对于一个旨在衡量科学历史写作影响的项目至关重要。第二个同样重要的研究成果是一套访谈记录。为了扩大代表20世纪30年代和40年代脊椎动物古生物学的原始材料，这组访谈将被录音、转录并作为收藏存放在美国哲学学会。其目的是为这个项目的基本方法论问题提供某种解决方案，即在现代生物学、历史研究和档案中缺乏代表性的学科之间的联系。

From 1870 to 1930, vertebrate paleontology enjoyed a central position among the sciences working out the details of Darwin's Theory of Evolution By Natural Selection. During the next twenty years, and the so-called "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology, vertebrate paleontology moved to the periphery ofdisciplines now orbiting chromosome genetics and theoretical population genetics. Existing histories of vertebrate paleontology seem to accept this life span for the discipline: the very few that venture into the 20th century end before 1940. The emergent new fields, conversely, gained "origin myths" told, debated, refined and studied scientists and historians alike. The dissertation research supported by this grant is a last phase of work that will support a dissertation in the history of biology. That project has three aims. First, it is an empirical project that will recover the history of American vertebrate paleontology between 1900 and 1950. Second, the study will consider the role of history-writing by scientists as they forge a place for their discipline among others. Third, the project will consider the historiographic problems inherent to producing a new account of the evolutionary synthesis told from the perspective of an "outsider" discipline. How does the marginalization of a science and its history in the present relate to the project of describing the past moment in which that move was accomplished? The research carried out under this grant consists of interviews with scientists and historians who have contributed to our understanding of vertebrate paleontology's place in the evolutionary synthesis. Many of those men are at retirement age or older; the few who can give "eye-witness" accounts of events during the synthesis are invaluable to this study. Information and opinions from these conversations will be combined with completed research using primary- and secondary material. The perceptions of these scientists are crucial for a project intended to measure the impact of history-writing in science. A second, equally important product of this grant's research is the set of interview transcripts. In order to enlarge the set of primary materials representing vertebrate paleontology during the 1930s and 1940s, the set of interviews will be tape recorded, transcribed and deposited as a collection with the American Philosophical Society. The intention is to provide some sort of solution to this project's basic methodological concern with the connection between disciplines that are poorly represented in modern biology, in historical studies and in archives.