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METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20160421T161802Z
DTSTART:20160426T120000Z
DTEND:20160426T130000Z
SUMMARY:Arthur D. Darbishire’s Bergsonian Biology - Emily Herring (Univer
 sity of Leeds)
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DESCRIPTION:This seminar is part of the lunchtime seminar series for the 
 Centre for the History of Science\, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM). Lun
 chtime seminars are typically no more than 30 minutes in length\, follow
 ed by a period for audience questions (ending before 2pm). All are welco
 me.\n\nEmily Herring (University of Leeds)\n\nArthur D. Darbishire’s Ber
 gsonian Biology\n\nAbstract: \n\nArthur Dukinfield Darbishire (1879-1915
 ) is known to historians of biology for his participation in the Mendeli
 an/Galtonian debate on the nature of heredity during the first decade of
  the 20th century. During his short career from 1901 to his death\, Darb
 ishire studied heredity in Oxford\, Manchester and Edinburgh\, through m
 ouse-breeding experiments\, shifting from an anti-Mendelian position to 
 a more nuanced and middle-ground but unorthodox view. Prompted by his in
 dependent and critical attitude (“One’s attitude as an investigator\,” h
 e wrote\, “should be one of continual\, unceasing and active distrust of
  oneself”) and influenced by Samuel Butler’s spiritualistic take on evol
 ution\, Darbishire developed high ambitions. According to his sister Hel
 en\, his “cherished desire was to make a contribution towards biology in
  the strict meaning of the term”. Darbishire wished to rethink the very 
 foundations of the life sciences in order to steer clear from the mechan
 istic and materialistic tendencies biology had inherited from 19th centu
 ry physics. \n\nPreoccupied by the relation between the phenomena being 
 observed and the interpretation of said phenomena\, Darbishire also wish
 ed to find a way to measure the distance between different biological th
 eories and reality. It is therefore not surprising that\, with such an a
 genda\, Darbishire was extremely enthusiastic when encountering\, around
  1911\, the anti-mechanism\, anti-determinism and special form of vitali
 sm of the world-famous French philosopher\, Henri Bergson (1859-1941). B
 ergson confirmed some of the ideas Darbishire had already formulated and
  gave him new resources to criticise early 20th century biology. This pa
 per examines how Bergson’s Creative Evolution constituted a major contri
 bution to Darbishire’s philosophy of biology. In the posthumously publis
 hed and unfinished An Introduction to a Biology (1917)\, it became clear
  that Bergson’s philosophy of life\, as well as his theory of knowledge\
 , contained\, in Darbishire’s opinion\, the potential for building new m
 ethodological principles for a new biology. In earlier writings\, Darbis
 hire had argued there was an inevitable gap between scientific fact and 
 reality\, and urged biologists to acknowledge this by practicing self-cr
 iticism. This idea was reinforced in Darbishire’s mind by Bergson’s theo
 ry of the origin of human intelligence. Bergson held the paradoxical vie
 w that human intelligence had evolved in such a way that it was badly eq
 uipped to understand evolution. Darbishire went one step further than th
 e French philosopher\, and used Bergson’s evolutionary explanation of th
 e origins of human intelligence to devise a criterion to decide between 
 good and bad biological theories.\n
STATUS:TENTATIVE
TRANSP:TRANSPARENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
LOCATION:2.57\, Simon Building\, Manchester
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