Erik L. Peterson

Assistant Professor of the History of Science/Technology/Medicine, Department of History; The University of Alabama

Peterson works at the intersection between history, philosophy, and biology, especially the development of evolutionary theory in France, Germany, and the UK since the nineteenth century. He first became interested in an alternative to the standard model of evolution after stumbling across C. H. Waddington’s Strategy of the Genes (1957) in the early-2000s. Since then, he’s dug through archives in five countries searching for the originators of Third Way evolution and the twists and turns on the road to our modern conceptions.

Erik started in biological anthropology, earning an undergraduate degree from the College of Wooster and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University, before being transfixed by Big Questions that scientists seemed reluctant to address. After a stint in the world of corporate web design, Erik found a niche in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame. His 2010 Ph.D. dissertation, “Finding Mind, Form, Organism, and Person in a Reductionist Age” followed the intermingled lives and intellectual trajectories of anthropologist Gregory Bateson and developmental biologist C. H. Waddington in pursuing a Third Way in the social and life sciences.

After joining the University of Alabama in 2013, Erik published articles and book chapters. But it wasn’t until pursuing the research for his 2017 book The Life Organic that he fully grasped the degree to which multiple generations of scientists and philosophers have attempted to refine and revive Third Way thinking through the last century and a half. While the concepts might feel new to us today, they have a long pedigree. Truly we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Erik’s most recent book-length project delves back into the history of biology and anthropology alongside Jim Bindon, professor emeritus of physical anthropology. Together, Peterson and Bindon are investigating the prospect that the Third Way thinking that underlies epigenetics could revolutionize our contentious theories of human race.

Quote

"Biologists have taken the celebrated saying of John Hunter: ‘Don’t think; try’ too literally. This is not the maxim upon which physics is founded. You must think first and then try. And you must think about the right things. In biology, we are required to think primarily about biological facts, not about hypothetical billiard balls."

(J. H. Woodger (1928) quoted in The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics, p. 69)

The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics

As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a “vital spark,” and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a “third way’ in biology, known by many names, including “the organic philosophy,” which gave rise to C. H. Waddington’s work in the subfield of epigenetics: an alternative to standard genetics and evolutionary biology that captured the attention of notable scientists from Francis Crick to Stephen Jay Gould. The Life Organic chronicles the influential biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, and biochemists from both sides of the Atlantic who formed Joseph Needham’s Theoretical Biology Club, defined and refined “third way” thinking through the 1930s, and laid the groundwork for some of the most cutting-edge achievements in biology today. By tracing the persistence of organicism into the twenty-first century, this book also raises significant questions about how we should model the development of the discipline of biology going forward.
One or Many? Race and Science from Columbus to Genomics

In progress: Expected 2019 (with Jim Bindon)

Selected Publications

“Mendel, Mendelism, and Education: 150 years since the ‘V ersuche’,” Science & Education24 (1&2) Berlin: Springer, 2015: 1-228 (with Kostas Kampourakis, University of Geneva, Switzerland) doi:10.1007/S11191-014-9722-X.

“The Conquest of Vitalism or the Eclipse of Organicism? The 1930s Cambridge Organiser Project and the Social Network of Mid-Twentieth-Century Biology,” British Journal for the History of Science 47 (2) 2014: 281-304. DOI: 10.1017/ S0007087413000435

“The Excluded Philosophy of Evo-Devo? Revisiting Waddington’s Failed Attempt to Embed Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Organicism’ in Evolutionary Biology,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33 (4) 2011: 301-320.

“William Bateson from Balanoglossus to Materials for the Study of Variation: the Transatlantic Roots of Discontinuity and the (Un)naturalness of Selection,” Journal of the History of Biology 41 (2) 2008: 267–305.

“Can Scientific Knowledge Sift the Wheat from the Tares? From Phrenology to #AlternativeFacts,” in What Does it Mean to Know in Science?, edited by K. Kampourakis and K. McCain (University of Chicago Press, expected 2019).

“Race and Evolution in Antebellum Alabama: the Polygenist Prehistory We’d Rather Ignore,” in Evolution In the American South, edited by A. Glaze, C. Lynn, W. Thompson, L. Reed (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

“Bio-exceptionalism: Is the History of Theoretical Biology Cyclical?” being prepared for a special issue of the Journal of the History of Biology, edited by J. Baedke and C. Brandt (submission by summer 2017).
Complete list of publications

For complete list of publications, click here.

Erik L. Peterson

Assistant Professor of the History of Science/Technology/Medicine, Department of History; The University of Alabama

Quote

Books

The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics

One or Many? Race and Science from Columbus to Genomics

Publications

Selected Publications

Complete list of publications