Dissertation Research: Vertebrate Paleontology and the Evolutionary Synthesis

从1870年到1930年，脊椎动物古生物学在研究达尔文的自然选择进化论细节的科学中享有中心地位。在接下来的二十年里，在所谓的进化生物学的“现代综合”中，脊椎动物古生物学转移到了现在围绕着染色体遗传学和理论种群遗传学的学科的边缘。现存的脊椎动物古生物学史似乎接受了这一学科的生命周期：进入20世纪的极少数古生物学在1940年之前结束。相反，新兴的新领域获得了讲述、辩论、提炼和研究科学家和历史学家的“起源神话”。这项拨款支持的论文研究是支持生物史论文的最后阶段的工作。该项目有三个目标。首先，这是一个经验性的项目，将恢复1900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撰写历史的作用，因为他们正在为自己的学科奠定一席之地。第三，该项目将考虑从“局外人”学科的角度对进化综合体进行新的描述所固有的历史学问题。一门科学及其历史在现在的边缘化与描述完成这一运动的过去时刻的项目有何关系？在这笔拨款下进行的研究包括对科学家和历史学家的采访，他们为我们理解脊椎动物古生物学在进化合成中的地位做出了贡献。这些人中的许多人都到了退休年龄或更年长；少数几个能在合成过程中对事件进行“目击”描述的人对这项研究非常宝贵。来自这些对话的信息和观点将与使用一手和二手材料完成的研究相结合。对于一个旨在衡量历史书写在科学中的影响的项目来说，这些科学家的看法至关重要。该基金研究的第二个同样重要的产品是一套采访记录。为了扩大代表1930年代和1940年代脊椎动物古生物学的原始材料集，这组采访将被录音、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，这些问题涉及在现代生物学、历史研究和档案中很少代表的学科之间的联系。

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.