Article ID: CBB972844102

The Impacts of Assumptions on Theories of Tooth Development and Evolution at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (2019)

unapi

Throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century, researchers became increasingly interested in explaining the ways in which mammalian teeth, especially molars, and their complex arrangements of cusps arose along both developmental and evolutionary timescales. By the 1890s, two theories garnered special prominence; the tritubercular theory and the concrescence theory. The tritubercular theory was proposed by Edward Drinker Cope in 1883, and later expanded by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1888, while the concrescence theory was developed by Carl Röse in 1892. Reviews concerning the evolution of mammalian molar teeth tended to paint the two theories as occupying opposing sides, and debates arose between their main proponents; however, their tenets do not seem logically incompatible. Throughout this paper, I argue that the conflict that arose was due not to the content of the theories, but to a diverse array of commitments Cope, Osborn, and Röse held, which turned into background assumptions within the setting of these theories. This history traces the context in which Cope, Osborn, and Röse developed the tritubercular and concrescence theories, and the ways in which the assumptions that these investigators held influenced their perceptions of their theories.

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Authors & Contributors
Ceccarelli, David
Bowler, Peter J.
Brinkman, P. D.
Brinkman, Paul David
Davidson, Jane Pierce
Homchick, Julie
Journals
Perspectives on Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Archives of Natural History
Essays in Arts and Sciences
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of the History of Biology
Publishers
University of Minnesota
Indiana University Press
The MIT Press
Twenty-First Century Books
Arizona State University
Codice Edizioni
Concepts
Controversies and disputes
Evolution
Paleontology
Evolutionary developmental biology
Fossils
Museums
People
Cope, Edward Drinker
Marsh, Othniel Charles
Osborn, Henry Fairfield
Eimer, Theodor Gustav Heinrich
Baldwin, James Mark
Berg, Lev Semenovich
Time Periods
19th century
20th century
20th century, early
20th century, late
21st century
Places
United States
Connecticut (U.S.)
Institutions
American Museum of Natural History, New York
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
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