The social origins of sciences: the emergence of biology, 1750-1914
The goal of this project is to understand the emergence of new scientific disciplines. Biology was the site of an intellectual land rush in the nineteenth century as scientists hurried to stake out claims made possible by new discoveries and technological innovation. I trace the development of 22 different research areas within biology in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States using digitalized historical records of the funding sources, research activities, and social networks of individual scientists. I focus on how the organizational patrons of biology approached the seemingly impossible task of sorting through competing claims and assessing the future potential of new research areas. What features of a scientist or a specialty marked it as holding special promise?
I find that scientists and bureaucrats embraced success within the academic labor market as the primary marker of future value. Prestige, attention, and resources flowed toward research areas where market competition was already the most intense, favoring the growth of an intersecting cluster of theoretical subdisciplines. Biology thrived earliest in Germany because state funding authorities relied on the judgment of professors who were highly attuned to the dynamics of the early academic labor market. In the United Kingdom and the United States, academic labor markets emerged much later and attitudes towards biology remained divided. Societies of wealthy amateurs prized the esteem a scientist held in the public sphere, while medical professionals typically failed to reach any agreement on evaluative criteria. Biology only took hold in the Anglo-American countries once changes in education policy and international student flows drew British and U.S. naturalists into greater contact – and competition – with Continental biologists. Gentlemanly amateurs and medical professionals were able to successfully defend their claims in some traditional and applied research areas, but only at the cost of marginalizing themselves from the emerging international scientific order.
I am currently pursuing this argument across a series of papers with the ultimate goal of producing a book manuscript. The first paper describes how the market for life science labor first took form in the late eighteenth century based on demand for skilled comparative anatomists at museums and medical schools. The second paper shows how the early expansion of the academic labor market in nineteenth-century Germany propelled the growth of highly theoretical biological disciplines and reinforced biases against applied research areas, especially in agriculture. The third and fourth examine the role of scientific societies as a possible alternative to the labor market as a site of evaluation, contrasting the weakness of societies in Germany to their crucial importance to the late development of biology in the United Kingdom. The story draws to a close with the creation of global social structures for biological disciplines in the early twentieth century. I have also written a spin-off paper on the structure of the market for medical care in the early United States, which recently appeared in Socio-Economic Review.
Jacob Habinek. “State Formation and the Origins of Disciplinary Specialization in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Center for Culture, Organizations, and Politics Working Paper #2010-03.
Jacob Habinek and Heather A. Haveman, 2019. “Professionals and Populists: The Making of a Free Market for Medicine in the United States, 1787–1860.” Socio-Economic Review 17(1): 81-108.
Jacob Habinek. “The Emergence of the Life Sciences Field: Integration and Differentiation in German Biology, 1770–1890.” In preparation.
I find that scientists and bureaucrats embraced success within the academic labor market as the primary marker of future value. Prestige, attention, and resources flowed toward research areas where market competition was already the most intense, favoring the growth of an intersecting cluster of theoretical subdisciplines. Biology thrived earliest in Germany because state funding authorities relied on the judgment of professors who were highly attuned to the dynamics of the early academic labor market. In the United Kingdom and the United States, academic labor markets emerged much later and attitudes towards biology remained divided. Societies of wealthy amateurs prized the esteem a scientist held in the public sphere, while medical professionals typically failed to reach any agreement on evaluative criteria. Biology only took hold in the Anglo-American countries once changes in education policy and international student flows drew British and U.S. naturalists into greater contact – and competition – with Continental biologists. Gentlemanly amateurs and medical professionals were able to successfully defend their claims in some traditional and applied research areas, but only at the cost of marginalizing themselves from the emerging international scientific order.
I am currently pursuing this argument across a series of papers with the ultimate goal of producing a book manuscript. The first paper describes how the market for life science labor first took form in the late eighteenth century based on demand for skilled comparative anatomists at museums and medical schools. The second paper shows how the early expansion of the academic labor market in nineteenth-century Germany propelled the growth of highly theoretical biological disciplines and reinforced biases against applied research areas, especially in agriculture. The third and fourth examine the role of scientific societies as a possible alternative to the labor market as a site of evaluation, contrasting the weakness of societies in Germany to their crucial importance to the late development of biology in the United Kingdom. The story draws to a close with the creation of global social structures for biological disciplines in the early twentieth century. I have also written a spin-off paper on the structure of the market for medical care in the early United States, which recently appeared in Socio-Economic Review.
Jacob Habinek. “State Formation and the Origins of Disciplinary Specialization in Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Center for Culture, Organizations, and Politics Working Paper #2010-03.
Jacob Habinek and Heather A. Haveman, 2019. “Professionals and Populists: The Making of a Free Market for Medicine in the United States, 1787–1860.” Socio-Economic Review 17(1): 81-108.
Jacob Habinek. “The Emergence of the Life Sciences Field: Integration and Differentiation in German Biology, 1770–1890.” In preparation.
Image: transition network between disciplines across 18 German universities, for institute directors active in 1850.