The Evolutionary Synthesis

9321370 Smocovitis近代科学史上最重要但最不为人所知的事件之一是在第二次世界大战期间发展起来的进化综合。在这项资助下，Smocovitis博士正在研究如何在进化生物学这一新兴学科的背景下最好地看待这种合成——这一生物学领域经常被认为是现代生物科学的“中心组织原理”或“中心隐喻”。这一学科形成的过程反过来又发生在这一时期统一生物科学的更大努力中。Smocovitis博士将这项研究分成了几个部分。其中一个组成部分涉及在实证主义努力统一知识的背景下对合并学科的审查。她正在研究这样一个问题：进化综合的“建筑师”在多大程度上继承并适应了这些统一知识的全球努力，以及究竟是如何继承和适应的。她还记录了实证主义认识论如何通过方法论的关注，如实验方法的采用，研究有机体的选择，以及定量方法在进化历史科学中的应用，塑造了他们对合法科学的看法。该研究的另一个组成部分涉及通过组织和机构的努力来统一和合法化美国的进化研究来审视新兴学科本身。本研究的最后一个组成部分是对两次世界大战期间的政治、伦理和国家问题的考察，比如对形成有意义的进化世界观的渴望。该项目不仅有望揭示西方科学史上的这一重要事件，而且还将使科学知识的历史根源、背景约束和人文特征变得透明。＊＊＊

9321370 Smocovitis One of the most significant but least understood events in the recent history of science is the evolutionary synthesis which developed around the time of World War II. Under this grant, Dr. Smocovitis is investigating how the synthesis might best be seen in the context of the emerging discipline of evolutionary biology--the area of biology which is frequently thought to be the "central organizing principle" or "central metaphor" of the modern biological sciences. This process of discipline formation in turn took place within larger efforts to unify the biological sciences in this period. Dr. Smocovitis has organized this study in several parts. One component involves examination of the merging discipline in the context of positivist efforts to unify knowledge. She is examining the question to what extent, and exactly how, the "architects" of the evolutionary synthesis inherited and accommodated these global efforts to unify knowledge. She is also documenting how positivist epistemology shaped their vision of legitimate science through methodological concerns such as the adoption of experimental methodologies, choice of study organism, and the application of quantitative methods to the historical science of evolution. Another component of the study involves a look at the emerging discipline itself through the organizational and institutional efforts to unify and legitimate evolutionary studies in the US. The final component of this study is an examination of political, ethical, and national concerns of the interwar period such as the desire to formulate a meaningful evolutionary world view. This project promises not only to shed light on this significant episode in the history of western science, but will also make transparent the historically rooted, context-bound, and humanistic features of scientific knowledge. ***