Biology Studies in East Asia
Biology Studies in East Asia
Grant Yamashita, Center for Biology and Society Post-Doctoral Fellow and Senior Project Manager presented a paper at the ISHPSSB off-year Workshop, "Biology Studies in East Asia" that was held at Kobe University, Japan, November 5-7, 2008.
Abstract: Germ, Soma, and Richard Owen by Grant Yamashita Grant Yamashita (Arizona State University, US) Richard Owen's "On Parthenogenesis" was published a full decade before "The Origin" and a quarter of a century before the celebrated works on heredity by Jaeger, Nussbaum, and Weismann, among others. Owen presciently described the germ-soma distinction and alluded to concepts of altruism and cell-relatedness. In so doing, Owen not only examined a peculiar mode of generation in animals, but also ruminated on the relationships between germ, soma, heredity, and multicellularity. These are thoroughly modern ideas that continue to be debated today.
More About the ISHPSSB off-year Workshop
The ISHPSSB off-year Workshop, "Biology Studies in East Asia" was held at Kobe University, Japan, November 5-7, 2008. This was the first ISHPSSB event held in Asia, co-sponsored by the Biological Unit of the History of Science Society of Japan and the Philosophy of Science Society, Japan. There were about 50 participants, 1 from Taiwan, 2 from Korea, 2 from China, 4 from the United States, 2 from Canada, 1 from France, and around 40 from Japan.
The workshop set the following objectives: (1) to build a network of scholars researching biology in East Asia and (2) to foster interactions between these scholars and current ISHPSSB members. In East Asia, there are many historians and sociologists of biology, and philosophers of biology are now increasing in number. However, East Asian participants in ISHPSSB biannual meetings is low. The hope is that smaller gatherings like this workshop will lead to increased interactions between East Asian scholars and the rest of the international community.
The following sessions ensued: Emerging Philosophy of Biology in East Asia, Systematic Biology and the Species Problem, Neuroethics: East and West, History of Eugenics in East Asia, and Japanese Biology in Colonial Imperial Universities. My invited talk, which was part of the Emerging Philosophy of Biology in East Asia session, investigated the role of 19th century anatomist Richard Owen in the debates on heredity that dominated the late 1800s. Specifically, Owen's early ideas about heredity, outlined in his 1849 lecture, "On Parthenogenesis," were surprisingly ahead of his time. In thinking about the relationships between germ, soma, heredity, and multicellularity, Owen addressed thoroughly modern ideas that continue to be debated today.