Phillip R. Sloan

University of Notre Dame | ND · Program in History and Philosophy of Science

This collection of essays originated in conferences held at the Gregorian University in Rome and at the University of Notre Dame to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. These essays, by leading scholars, assess the continuing relevance of Darwin’s work from the perspectives of biological...

This paper examines the history of biophysics at the University of Chicago, with a specific focus on the history of the Institute for Radiobiology and Biophysics (IRB), established at the university in 1945 as a continuation of the Manhattan Project. Discussed herein is how biophysical research developed at Chicago, and how the IRB formed the locus...

I am honored to participate in a symposium dedicated to the intellectual work of a unique Churchman, intellectual, and interpreter of science, whose premature passing is a deep loss to the Catholic and general intellectual world. 1 Over the years in the course of his visits to the University of Notre Dame and through other contacts, I came to appre...

This paper approaches the issue of the status of teleological reasoning in contemporary biology through a historical examination of events of the 1930s that surrounded Niels Bohr's efforts to introduce 'complementarity' into biological discussions. The paper examines responses of three theoretical physicists who engaged boundary questions between t...

Carbon budgets were prepared for eight species of marine phytoplankton organisms in culture and one natural red tide population during 5-hr experiments at 21 C and light intensity 0.07 cal/cm2/min. Net cell carbon increase, dissolved organic carbon excretion, and respiration were each determined by two or more independent methods.In diatoms, net ox...

This paper examines the history of biophysics at the University of Chicago, with a specific focus on the history of the Institute for Radiobiology and Biophysics (IRB), established at the university in 1945 as a continuation of the Manhattan Project. Discussed herein is how biophysical research developed at Chicago, and how the IRB formed the locus...

Three pelagic marine phytoplankters, Coccolithus huxleyi, Skeletonema costatum, and Thalassiosira ro-tula, and a facultative heterotroph, Cyclotella cryp-tica, have been exposed to three organic substrates, viz, glucose, acetate, and glutamate, at low concentrations (organic carbon 0.25 mg/liter). Experiments were performed in the dark and light an...

This paper seeks to show Kant's importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon's distinctions of 'abstract' and 'physical' truths, and applied...

This paper examines the origin and philosophical significance of Richard Owen's (1804-92) theory of the archetypal vertebrate in relation to the important methodological developments of German-inspired anti-empiricist methodologies in England in the 1814-45 period, particularly as articulated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his close disciple, the s...

Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 (2002) 229-253 Situating Kant's philosophical project in relation to the natural sciences of his day has been of concern to several scholars from both the history of science and the history of philosophy. Historians of philosophy have displayed an expanded awareness of, and interest in, the importance of th...

The assimilation of Mendel's paper into Britain took place in an Edwardian social context. This paper concentrates on the interplay of empirical and philosophical issues in this reception. A feature of the British reception of mendelism, not duplicated elsewhere, was the role of phenomenalist philosophies of science as developed by the physicist-ma...

L'auteur se permet d'explorer trois conceptions de la nature selon Darwin en examinant tout d'abord ses reflexions sur la nature dans la tradition de la pensee d'Alexander von Humboldt, et analyse ensuite le developpement de la philosophie de la nature de Darwin dans la periode ayant suivi l'expedition a bord du Beagle et le role de celle-ci dans l...

“Controlling Our Destinies contains the most penetrating set of available essays that explore the cultural dimensions of the Human Genome Project. It will become essential reading for those who want to assess the value and significance of the HGP. It’s accessibility makes it a perfect supplement for any biology program that wants to ex...

To understand the full importance of the revolution in the human sciences encompassed in the comment by Comte de Buffon, this chapter focuses on the concept of a “natural history” of the human species. To develop these claims, it initially explores the origins of the idea of a “natural history” of man in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth ce...

A delay circuit ia described with which long pulse delay is possible using precision components.

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Without Abstract

Darwin's Philosophical Significance - RuseMichael: Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Pp. xv, 303. $24.95.) - Volume 50 Issue 2 - Phillip R. Sloan

The entry of time and history into biological systems of classification is perhaps the single most significant development in the history of biological systematics in the modern era. Darwin's claiming that descent is ‘… the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system’, rather than seeing the ans...

Restudying Condorcet - BakerKeith Michael: Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1975. Pp.538. $22.50.) - Volume 38 Issue 2 - Phillip R. Sloan

Three pelagic marine phytoplankters, Coccolithus huxleyi, Skeletonema costatum, and Thalassiosira rotula, and a facultative heterotroph, Cyclotella cryptica, have been exposed to three organic substrates, viz, glucose, acetate, and glutamate, at low concentrations (organic carbon 0.25 mg/liter). Experiments were performed in the dark and light and...

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, taxonomic biology was confronted with a divisive issue having distinct theoretical and practical consequences for subsequent taxonomic biology, an issue which served to split eighteenth-century biologists on three interrelated points of concern. The first of these centered on the question of the selec...

“Do we have the ethical resources to use our genetic powers wisely and humanely? … Do existing ethical theories, concepts, and principles provide the materials for constructing more adequate instruments for moral navigation?” These questions posed at the outset of From Chance to Choice go to the heart of the whole project upon which we are embarked...

Sir Richard Owen (1804-1892), comparative anatomist, colleague and later antagonist of Darwin, and head of the British Museum (Natural History), was a major figure in Victorian science, and one of the least well known. Historians of science have found Owen a difficult subject, partly because he seldom wrote at length about his theories of the natur...

To better predict plant production in the sea, it would be desirable to be able to calculate, from easily obtainable measurements at one sampling, the growth rate of the prevailing stock of phytoplankton. To this end growth rates, pigment composition, cell volume and cell surface area data were collected for several species of marine phytoplankton...