Dissertation Improvement Grant:

本博士论文项目由国家科学、技术与社会计划资助。该项目侧重于格雷戈里·贝特森（1904-1980）和c.h.沃丁顿（1905-1975）的智力生涯和人际关系，他们跨越了不同的领域（包括20世纪20年代到70年代的人类学、心理学和信息科学），并努力反对他们所认为的社会科学和生命科学中过度专业化和还原论的趋势。本文还将从贝特森和沃丁顿的角度探讨进化生物学对这些领域的影响。这笔拨款将支持研究和前往美国和英国的三个档案馆。本研究与生命科学和社会科学的历史、哲学和社会学相关，原因有二。它调查了现代综合论的历史，即20世纪30年代实现的进化论与“还原论”遗传学的整合，并将其扩展到社会科学，反对贝特森和沃丁顿所倡导的进化“有机体论”。通过研究期刊、研究所等的形成，以及未发表的通信，它有助于我们理解跨学科和边缘化的社会学过程，这些过程是有机替代理论的支持者所经历的。贝特森和沃丁顿将他们对生物还原论的理论担忧指向了包括人口过剩、资源退化和社会生物学在内的社会和生态问题。他们所支持的反还原论，以及他们最亲密的通讯员，包括李约瑟、伍格、米德、埃里克森，促成了二战后科学种族主义的退却。

This doctoral dissertation project is supported by the Science, Technology, and Society Program. The project focuses on the intellectual careers and relationships of Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and C. H. Waddington (1905-1975), individuals who traversed disparate fields (including anthropology, psychology, and information science from the 1920s through 1970s) and strived against what they perceived as tendencies toward hyper-specialization and reductionism in the social as well as life sciences. The dissertation will also consider the influence of evolutionary biology on these fields by way of Bateson and Waddington. The grant will support research and travel to three archives in the US and UK.This study is relevant to the history, philosophy, and sociology of the life and social sciences for two reasons. It surveys the history of the Modern Synthesis, the integration of evolutionary theory with "reductionist" genetics achieved in the 1930s and its extension into the social sciences, against the evolutionary "organicism" advocated by Bateson and Waddington. by examining the formation of journals, institutes, etc., alongside unpublished correspondence, it contributes to our understanding both of interdisciplinarity and of the sociological process of marginalization that proponents of the organicist alternative experienced. Bateson and Waddington aimed their theoretical worries about biological reductionism toward social and ecological problems including overpopulation, resource degradation, and sociobiology. The anti-reductionism endorsed by them, and their closest correspondents including Needham, Woodger, Mead, Erikson contributed to the retreat of scientific racism after World War II.