Rebels, Mavericks, and Heretics in Biology by Oren Harman Dietrich & Michael

Author:Oren Harman Dietrich & Michael [Dietrich, Oren Harman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300116397

FURTHER READING

Harrington, A. Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).

Sperry, R. W. Science and Moral Priority (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

Trevarthen, C., ed. Brain Circuits and Functions of the Mind: Essays in Honor of Roger W. Sperry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Leon Croizat:

A Radical Biogeographer

DAVID L. HULL

The contributors to this volume deal primarily with rebels in biology whose iconoclastic views eventually became accepted, but not all iconoclasts succeed. In fact, very few do. I deal mainly with Leon Croizat, a biogeographer who worked in almost total isolation from other biogeographers of his day. "I do not like to share responsibilities, so I always do or die by myself," he wrote.' If anyone counts as a rebel, renegade, maverick, or iconoclast, it is certainly Leon Croizat. To what extent did he succeed? To what extent did he fail? And can we learn anything about science from studying Croizat's career?

From before Darwin's time to the present, scientists who studied the distribution of plants and animals around the world have disagreed with each other about the nature of the various mechanisms responsible for these biogeographic patterns and the methods of analysis to be used in discerning them. Were there centers of origin scattered across the continents, and once a center originated did new species disperse from it? Were continents stable, or did they drift, carrying along with them the species that inhabited them? Of equal importance, what methods are to be used to subdivide plants and animals into groups? On the basis of one classificatory method, certain patterns might emerge. If different methods are used, different patterns might be discernable. Which methods of classification are preferable?

For example, the distribution of species around the South Pole has fascinated biogeographers since the time of J. D. Hooker (1817-1911), Darwin's closest friend. Hooker used the striking resemblances between disjoint populations of the species inhabiting the landmasses that circle Antarctica to support Darwin's theory of evolution. Hooker explained the biogeography of the Antarctic region by means of migrations across land connections. Darwin agreed with Hooker that the biogeography of the Antarctic region supported his theory of evolution but thought that the distributions of plants and animals were best explained by means of long-distant dispersal over the intervening stretches of ocean. Put crudely, the contrast is between dispersal across land and dispersal across water. During the following century the "dispersalist" views of Darwin prevailed, culminating in the works of W. D. Matthew (1871-1930), G. G. Simpson (1902-1984), Ernst Mayr (1904-2005), and P. J. Darlington (1904-1983).

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