Article ID: CBB000831713

Everything is everywhere: but the environment selects”: Ubiquitous Distribution and Ecological Determinism in Microbial Biogeography (2008)

unapi

Recent discoveries of geographical patterns in microbial distribution are undermining microbiology's exclusively ecological explanations of biogeography and their fundamental assumption that `everything is everywhere: but the environment selects'. This statement was generally promulgated by Dutch microbiologist Martinus Wilhelm Beijerinck early in the twentieth century and specifically articulated in 1934 by his compatriot, Lourens G. M. Baas Becking. The persistence of this precept throughout twentieth-century microbiology raises a number of issues in relation to its formulation and widespread acceptance. This paper will trace the conceptual history of Beijerinck's claim that `everything is everywhere' in relation to a more general account of its theoretical, experimental and institutional context. His principle also needs to be situated in relationship to plant and animal biogeography, which, this paper will argue, forms a continuum of thought with microbial biogeography. Finally, a brief overview of the contemporary microbiological research challenging `everything is everywhere' reveals that philosophical issues from Beijerinck's era of microbiology still provoke intense discussion in twenty-first century investigations of microbial biogeography.i

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Description On the ideas of Dutch microbiologists Martinus Wilhelm Beijerinck and Lourens G. M. Baas Becking.


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Authors & Contributors
Theunissen, Bert
Bos, Pieter
Brigandt, Ingo
Calisher, C. H.
Fantini, Bernardino
García-Sancho, Miguel
Journals
Journal of the History of Biology
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Gewina
Revue des Questions Scientifiques
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Publishers
Oxford University Press
University of Pittsburgh
University of California, Berkeley
Delft Univ. Press
Donzelli
Springer
Concepts
Microbiology
Molecular biology
Biology
DNA; RNA
Genetics
Discipline formation
People
Beijerinck, Martinus Willem
Dayhoff, Margaret O.
Goodman, Morris
Johannsen, Wilhelm Ludvig
Loeffler, Friedrich
McElroy, William David
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
18th century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Netherlands
Prague (Czechia)
Institutions
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.)
Stanford University
McCollum-Pratt Institute
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