Garland E. Allen III (1936-2023).

Leading historian of biology and social justice activist.

Explaining Regeneration: Cells and Limbs as Complex Living Systems, Learning From History.

Regeneration has been investigated since Aristotle, giving rise to many ways of explaining what this process is and how it works. Current research focuses on gene expression and cell signaling of regeneration within individual model organisms. We tend to look to model organisms on the reasoning that because of evolution, information gained from other species must in some respect be generalizable. However, for all that we have uncovered about how regeneration works within individual organisms, we have yet to translate what we have gleaned into achieving the goal of regenerative medicine: to harness and enhance our own regenerative abilities. Turning to history may provide a crucial perspective in advancing us toward this goal. History gives perspective, allowing us to reflect on how our predecessors did their work and what assumptions they made, thus also revealing limitations. History, then, may show us how we can move from our current reductionist thinking focused on particular selected model organisms toward generalizations about this crucial process that operates across complex living systems and move closer to repairing our own damaged bodies.

Understanding regeneration at different scales.

Regeneration occurs at many different levels in nature, from individual organisms (notably earthworms and hydra), through communities of microbes, to ecosystems such as forests. Researchers in the life sciences and the history and philosophy of science are collaborating to explore how the processes of repair and recovery observed at these different scales are related.

Embryos, microscopes, and society.

Embryos have different meanings for different people and in different contexts. Seen under the microscope, the biological embryo starts out as one cell and then becomes a bunch of cells. Gradually these divide and differentiate to make up the embryo, which in humans becomes a fetus at eight weeks, and then eventually a baby. At least, that happens in those cases that carry through normally and successfully. Yet a popular public perception imagines the embryo as already a little person in the very earliest stages of development, as if it were predictably to become an adult. In actuality, cells can combine, pull apart, and recombine in a variety of ways and still produce embryos, whereas most embryos never develop into adults at all. Biological embryos and popular imaginations of embryos diverge. This paper looks at some of the historical reasons for and social implications of that divergence.

Garland Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and Development.

Garland E. Allen's 1978 biography of the Nobel Prize winning biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan provides an excellent study of the man and his science. Allen presents Morgan as an opportunistic scientist who follows where his observations take him, leading him to his foundational work in Drosophila genetics. The book was rightfully hailed as an important achievement and it introduced generations of readers to Morgan. Yet, in hindsight, Allen's book largely misses an equally important part of Morgan's work - his study of development and regeneration. It is worth returning to this part of Morgan, exploring what Morgan contributed and also why he has been seen by contemporaries and historians such as Allen as having set aside some of the most important developmental problems. A closer look shows how Morgan's view of cells and development that was different from that of his most noted contemporaries led to interpretation of his important contributions in favor of genetics. This essay is part of a special issue, revisiting Garland Allen's views on the history of life sciences in the twentieth century.

Computational perspectives in the history of science: to the memory of Peter Damerow.

Computational methods and perspectives can transform the history of science by enabling the pursuit of novel types of questions, dramatically expanding the scale of analysis (geographically and temporally), and offering novel forms of publication that greatly enhance access and transparency. This essay presents a brief summary of a computational research system for the history of science, discussing its implications for research, education, and publication practices and its connections to the open-access movement and similar transformations in the natural and social sciences that emphasize big data. It also argues that computational approaches help to reconnect the history of science to individual scientific disciplines.

Regenerative medicine's historical roots in regeneration, transplantation, and translation.

Regenerative medicine is not new; it has not sprung anew out of stem cell science as has often been suggested. There is a rich history of study of regeneration, of development, and of the ways in which understanding regeneration advances study of development and also has practical and medical applications. This paper explores the history of regenerative medicine, starting especially with T.H. Morgan in 1901 and carrying through the history of transplantation research in the 20th century, to an emphasis on translational medicine in the late 20th century.

Ross Granville Harrison (1870-1959) and perspectives on regeneration.

Historical case studies can serve as cautionary tales, reminding us to reflect on underlying assumptions and on limitations of any particular approach. Ross Harrison's work recorded at the beginning and end of his career in the Journal of Experimental Zoology reveal his own morphological and experimental convictions, as they played out in his studies of regeneration. A closer look at this particular example of Harrison's contributions offers a perspective from which to view current studies of regenerative phenomena and assumptions about appropriate research approaches and the driving questions involved.

The Embryo Project: an integrated approach to history, practices, and social contexts of embryo research.

This essay describes the approach and early results of the collaborative Embryo Project and its on-line encyclopedia (http://embryo.asu.edu). The project is based on a relational database that allows federated searches and inclusion of multiple types of objects targeted for multiple user groups. The emphasis is on the history and varied contexts of developmental biology, focusing on people, places, institutions, techniques, literature, images, and other aspects of study of embryos. This essay introduces the ways of working as well as the long-term goals of the project. We invite others to join the effort, both in this particular project and in joining together in digital collection, archiving, and knowledge generation at the borders of biology and history.

Controlling life: from Jacques Loeb to regenerative medicine.

In his 1987 book Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, Philip Pauly presented his readers with the biologist Jacques Loeb and his role in developing an emphasis on control of life processes. Loeb's work on artificial parthenogenesis, for example, provided an example of bioengineering at work. This paper revisits Pauly's study of Loeb and explores the way current research in regenerative medicine reflects the same tradition. A history of regeneration research reveals patterns of thinking and research methods that both echo Loeb's ideology and point the way to modern studies. Pauly's work revealed far more than we readers realized at the time of its publication.

What difference does history of science make, anyway?

This essay opens up the question of what difference the history of science makes. What is the value of the history of science, beyond its role as an academic pursuit that we historians of science know and love? It introduces the set of essays that follow as explorations that grew out of a seminar on this topic and that arise from the authors' particular concerns both that historians of science do not work hard enough to make their work of value and that others do not know of the potential. That seminar, at the Marine Biological Laboratory, was funded for nineteen years by the Dibner Institute and last year by Brent Dibner. It will continue and carry such discussions forward in new ways as the Arizona State University-Marine Biological Laboratory History of Biology Seminar Series. This set of focused essays seeks to invite lively discussion and response.

How can history of science matter to scientists?

History of science has developed into a methodologically diverse discipline, adding greatly to our understanding of the interplay between science, society, and culture. Along the way, one original impetus for the then newly emerging discipline--what George Sarton called the perspective "from the point of view of the scientist"--dropped out of fashion. This essay shows, by means of several examples, that reclaiming this interaction between science and history of science yields interesting perspectives and new insights for both science and history of science. The authors consequently suggest that historians of science also adopt this perspective as part of their methodological repertoire.

The ethos and ethics of translational research.

Calls for the "translation" of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD). Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research and assess the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos.