Article ID: CBB021564496

The reception of Darwin in late nineteenth-century German paleontology as a case of pyrrhic victory (2017)

unapi

This paper investigates German-speaking paleontologists' reception of Darwin's thought and the ways in which they negotiated their space of knowledge production accordingly. In German-speaking regions, the majority of paleontologists welcomed Darwin's magnum opus, since it granted paleontology an independent voice within biology, and thus a new institutional setting. However, in the process of negotiating the features of paleontology within the Darwinian framework, German paleontologists constrained their practices too narrowly, for fear of leaving open possible results at odds with the burgeoning Darwinian biological community. In doing so, they also limited the further development of German paleontology. In other words, paleontologists Karl Alfred von Zittel (1839–1904) and Melchior Neumayr (1845–1890) advocated for a handmaid's role for paleontology, which increased biologists' dependence on paleontologists for empirical evidence, but which limited paleontologists' theoretical autonomy. By analyzing both the institutional strategies and the methodology of German-speaking paleontology at the end of the nineteenth century, this paper shows the importance of scientists' ability to enter into and negotiate their place within the broader biological community.

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Authors & Contributors
Meiring, Henry-James
Weber, Bruce H.
Veuille, Michel
Stefano, Waldir
Sepkoski, David Christopher
Schuller, Kyla C.
Concepts
Biology
Darwinism
Discipline formation
Paleontology
Evolution
Scientific communities; interprofessional relations
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Germany
United States
England
Scotland
Austria
Chicago (Illinois, U.S.)
Institutions
Univ. Rostock, Fachbereich Geschichtswissenschaften, Institut für Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte
Prussian Academy of Sciences
University of Chicago
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