3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

History of Biology 345
physico-theologist H.S. Reimarus (1762), the first critical and summarizing study
of animal behavior. The two groups of authors of the 16th–19th centuries who published
on animal behavior were (1) Philosophers like Descartes and Condillac who
were especially interested in the comparison man–animal. They solved their problems
strictly deductive-rationalistically; and (2) True naturalists like J.H. Zorn,
Reimarus, Gilbert White, Huber, Kirby, Spence who were physico-theologists.
The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (1982d). When
this large book appeared during the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s death, it was
widely acclaimed and reviewed in numerous journals, newspapers, and magazines.
Reviewers described it as written by a master of detail, interpretation and synthesis;
magisterial, breathtaking, a monumental tome, a work of immense erudition
and scholarship. Even two reviews of the book reviews appeared by M. Ruse (“Admayration,”
Quarterly Rev. Biol. 60: 183–192, 1985) and W.F. Bynum (Nature 317:
585–586, 1985). D. Futuyma wrote in his review:
“One cannot help standing in awe of the Germanic capacity for vast, allembracing
synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust,orWagner’s
integration of the arts into a Gesamtkunstwerk in which all of human history and
experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst
Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all of biology, a Ring
des Nibelungen complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of reductionism, the
struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population
thinking from the bonds of essentialism. Mayr’s goal is to draw from the successful
ideas of the past an integrated history of all of biology and its implications for the
philosophy of science” (Science 216: 842, 1982).
Several reviewers noted the “autobiographical” character of the book, because
Mayr had himself “done a considerable amount of research in most areas covered
by this volume” (p. VII). He was thus able to place his own relevant publications
in the context of the overall history of evolutionism and to trace the historical
roots of his work and opinions. Appropriately, he dedicated this large work to his
wife Gretel. The volume is a history of the problems, concepts and ideas which
evolutionary biology has dealt with since the time of Aristotle. The problems are
the natural units of the evolution of biological thought which are here followed
through the centuries in a clear exposition: “It is the principle objective of this
volume to discover for each branch of biology and for each period what the open
problems were and what proposals were made to solve them. […] At its best this
approach would portray the complete life history of each problem of biology”
(p. 19).
The book is organized by topics—(1) diversity of life, (2) evolution, (3) variation
and its inheritance—but within each of these sections, the subject matter is treated
chronologically. Part I of this volume deals with natural history, the study of
organic diversity, a history of systematics as the science of diversity. Darwin’s
Origin, biogeography, ethology, and ecology developed out of natural history.
The core of Part II on evolution is the three chapters on Charles Darwin and
his five theses which are followed by a discussion of the events leading to the