Emily Herring

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before Wilhelm Johannsen first distinguished between the hidden hereditary makeup of organisms (the genotype) and its macroscopic manifestations (the phenotype), theories postulating invisible internal particles meant to account for the external appearance of living organisms were devised. These were not just attempts at solving the problems of inheritance and generation, but also a way of addressing the intimate nature of the bodies of living beings. The problem of embodiment was—for naturalists such as Buffon, Darwin, and Weismann—the problem of understanding how the macroscopic level could be explained by the activity of the microscopic particular level. By the time Johannsen had coined the term “gene” in 1909 this problem had shifted into working out how organisms’ visible characters could explain the workings of the particles hidden within. This Reflection retraces the transition from one conception of embodiment to the other.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859-1941) became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a deterministic, predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of individual consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him "the most dangerous man in the world." In Herald of a Restless World, Emily Herring recovers how Bergson captivated a society in flux. She shows how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, laughter, and the creative continue to shape how we see the world around us. Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect. Bergson's extraordinary insight into life's fundamental questions remains urgent and relevant to this day.

Integrated History and Philosophy of Science is commonly understood as the study of science from a combined historical and philosophical perspective. Yet, since its gradual formation as a research field, the question of how to suitably integrate both perspectives remains open. This volume presents cutting edge research from junior iHPS scholars, and in doing so provides a snapshot of current developments within the field, explores the connection between iHPS and other academic disciplines, and demonstrates some of the topics that are attracting the attention of scholars who will help define the future of iHPS.

In 1912, Julian Huxley published his first book The Individual in the Animal Kingdom which he dedicated to the then world-famous French philosopher Henri Bergson. Historians have generally adopted one of two attitudes towards Huxley’s early encounter with Bergson. They either dismiss it entirely as unimportant or minimise it, deeming it a youthful indiscretion preceding Huxley’s full conversion to Fisherian Darwinism. Close biographical study and new archive materials demonstrate, however, that neither position is tenable. The Bergsonian elements in play in Julian Huxley’s early works fed into his first ideas about progress in evolution and even his celebrated theories of bird courtship. Furthermore, the view that Huxley rejected Bergson in his later years needs to be revised. Although Huxley ended up claiming that Bergson’s theory of evolution had no explanatory power, he never repudiated the descriptive power of Bergson’s controversial notion of the élan vital. Even into the Modern Synthesis period, Huxley represented his own synthesis as drawing decisively on Bergson’s philosophy.