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The Dimensions of Scientific Controversy: The Biometric—Mendelian Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Robert Olby
Robert Olby
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Division of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT.
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Extract

The increasing attention which has been given to social history of science and to the sociological analysis of scientific activity has resulted in a renewed interest in scientific controversies. Furthermore, the rejection of the presentist view of history, according to which those contestants who took what we can identify, with the benefit of modern knowledge, as the ‘right’ stand in a controversy, were right and their opponents were ‘wrong’, left the subject of scientific controversies with many questions. What determines their emergence, course and resolution? When Froggatt and Nevin wrote on the Bio-metric-Mendelian controversy in 1971 they called their article ‘descriptive rather than interpretative’, so they avoided the very questions we would like to ask. Provine, in the same year, concentrated on the strong personalities of the contestants, their clashes, and the scientific arguments in play. But in 1975 Mackenzie and Barnes argued that the controversy could not be accounted for unless recourse was had to sociological factors. Their view has become widely known and figured prominently in 1982 in Steven Shapin's recital of the empirical achievements of the application of the sociological approach. I have returned to this subject because I do not yet feel altogether convinced by Mackenzie and Barnes' analysis. Even if their analysis of the controversy between Pearson and Bateson be accepted, it is not so obvious how effectively it can be used to explain the controversy between Weldon and Bateson, and I am not confident that it is adequate for an understanding of the evolution of their differing views of the mechanism of evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 299 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1989

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References

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95 Butler, Samuel (1835–1902)Google Scholar, grandson of Butler, Samuel (1774–1839)Google Scholar. Headmaster of Shrewsbury School and Bishop of Lichfield. The former wrote: Life and Habit, London, 1878Google Scholar, and Evolution, Old and New, London. 1879Google Scholar, Luck or Cunning? as the Means of Organic Modification, London, 1887Google Scholar, also Erewhon, London, 1872Google Scholar, and The Way of All Flesh, London, 1903.Google Scholar

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97 Mackenzie was inclined to give more weight to the role of skills associated with different trainings in op. cit. (20), pp. 125–129. He concluded ‘… detailed technical judgements made by the two sides reflect at least in part the social interests of the groups of scientific practitioners with differing skills’. Mackenzie's essay ‘Sociobiologies in Competition: the Biometrician-Mendelian Debate’, in Webster, op. cit (9), pp. 243–288Google Scholar, is identical with chapter vi of Mackenzie's Statistics in Britain, 1.e. op. cit. (20).

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