Article ID: CBB656427237

The age of biology: When plant physiology was in the center of American life science (2021)

unapi

For much of the twentieth century, plant physiologists considered themselves in an ideal position to study and explain the functions and processes of plants. Much of that authority stemmed from plant physiologists’ long-standing commitment to experimental control and the integration of the physical sciences into biological practice. This article places plant physiology back in the center of the story of the recent life sciences. It shows the development of parallel experimental research programs into environmental as well as genetic effects on growth and development in plant physiology and genetics, and notes that the pursuit of an experimental environment was celebrated as much as (and occasionally more than) a molecular vision of life throughout most of the twentieth century by much of the plant science community. Thus, this article concludes that the history of the recent life sciences needs new complementary narratives of plant physiology with genetics, new concepts with technological tools, and plant-sized scales with the molecular. The history of the ‘Age of Biology,’ as the plant scientists saw it, helps confront the issue first posed by Evelyn Fox Keller, namely that the history of genetics has overshadowed a larger history of experimental life science. My answer here is through a larger narrative of the rise of the complementary experimental sciences of genes and environments in the life sciences.

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Authors & Contributors
Munns, David P. D.
Brian Gunning
Bruce Wellington
Marion Manifold
Roland Jahnke
Wale, Matthew
Concepts
Plant physiology
Botany
Biology
Life sciences
Natural history
Plant genetics
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
17th century
Places
Great Britain
Sweden
France
Australia
Institutions
Bordeaux. Université
Australian National University
Universität Zürich
Royal Society of London
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
California Institute of Technology
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