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20年里，进化生物学的所谓“现代综合”，脊椎动物古生物学转移到了染色体遗传学和理论群体遗传学的边缘。现存的古脊椎动物史似乎接受了这一学科的生命周期：极少数进入20世纪的历史在1940年之前结束。相反，新兴的新领域获得了科学家和历史学家们讲述、辩论、提炼和研究的“起源神话”。该补助金支持的论文研究是支持生物学史论文的最后阶段。该项目有三个目标。首先，这是一个经验项目，将恢复1900年至1950年之间的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，因为他们为自己的学科和其他学科建立了一席之地。第三，该项目将考虑从“局外人”学科的角度对进化综合进行新的叙述所固有的史学问题。一门科学及其历史在当下的边缘化，与描述完成这一转移的过去时刻的计划有什么关系？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，他们为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。其中许多人已到退休年龄或年龄更大;在综合过程中，少数能够对事件进行“目击”描述的人对这项研究非常宝贵。这些对话中的信息和意见将与使用主要和次要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史写作影响的项目至关重要。第二个，同样重要的产品，这项赠款的研究是一套采访记录。为了扩大20世纪30年代和40年代代表脊椎动物古生物学的主要材料集，这组采访将被录音，转录并作为美国哲学学会的收藏品存放。其目的是提供某种解决方案，以这个项目的基本方法的关注与学科之间的联系，在现代生物学，历史研究和档案中代表性很差。

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.