The institutionalisation of biology in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1866-1894.

Biology, like most scientific disciplines, emerged in the nineteenth century. However, disciplinary institutionalisation processes are not linear; a concept can be proposed, but not develop. Biology originated in the presence of established traditions such as anatomy, physiology, botany, and zoology, which represent the thematic and practical diversity under which it was understood. Based on the records of the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the process by which biology emerged will be described. We will also recount how the discipline underwent changes throughout the century, where contrasting methodologies and theories were emphasized at different times.

The institutionalisation of biology in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1866-1894 / A institucionalização da biologia na British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1866-1894

Abstract Biology, like most scientific disciplines, emerged in the nineteenth century. However, disciplinary institutionalisation processes are not linear; a concept can be proposed, but not develop. Biology originated in the presence of established traditions such as anatomy, physiology, botany, and zoology, which represent the thematic and practical diversity under which it was understood. Based on the records of the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the process by which biology emerged will be described. We will also recount how the discipline underwent changes throughout the century, where contrasting methodologies and theories were emphasized at different times.

Resumo A biologia, assim como a maioria das disciplinas, surgiu no século XIX. No entanto, os processos de institucionalização das disciplinas não são lineares; um conceito pode ser proposto, mas não ser desenvolvido. A biologia originou-se em meio a tradições estabelecidas, como a anatomia, fisiologia, botânica e zoologia, que representam a diversidade temática e prática sob a qual era compreendida. O processo do qual a biologia emergiu será descrito com base nos registros dos encontros anuais da British Association for the Advancement of Science. Relatamos também como a disciplina passou por modificações ao longo do século, em que metodologias e teorias contrastantes ganharam evidência em diferentes momentos.

Octavio Ocampo, Mexican painter: a metamorphic look at the discourse between the local and the global.

Art and science is an area of research that has strengthened recently, mainly due to the impact of interdisciplinary work. At the same time, approaches between the humanities and the sciences have succeeded in re-signifying traditional views towards critical positions such as postcolonialism, especially in the colonially so-called "Global South". In this paper, we want to review the case of the work of the Mexican artist Octavio Ocampo through works that present the case of biological and cultural evolution. From this, we want to reflect on the public perception of science in Mexico, the tensions between social and natural sciences, and the urgent need to strengthen the postcolonial discourse in scientific practice.

El "darwinismo puro" de Alfred Russel Wallace: aportaciones a la teoría evolutiva moderna / Alfred Russel Wallace's 'pure darwinism': contributions to modern evolutionary theory

La historia suele ser insistente en recordar el caso de Alfred Russel Wallace como quien, de manera secundaria, apoyó la propuesta de Darwin. Para efectos de este trabajo se presenta lo que Wallace denominó en su obra Darwinism (1889) los elementos básicos del darwinismo puro, que servirían de base para lo que George John Romanes llamaría neodarwinismo, a partir tanto del trabajo de Wallace como del de August Weismann. Esos elementos abarcan ideas que comúnmente se asocian de manera exclusiva con el trabajo de Charles Darwin, como el concepto biológico de especie, los diferentes tipos de variación y su origen, la importancia de la selección natural como el mecanismo preponderante para entender la evolución, el rechazo a los mecanismos lamarckianos, entre otros puntos. A partir de lo anterior, los objetivos de este trabajo son dos: por un lado, rescatar esos conceptos básicos del darwinismo puro de Wallace; y por el otro, establecer algunas posibles explicaciones sobre por qué persiste la idea de que el trabajo de Wallace no parece haber sido de importancia para el desarrollo de la Síntesis Moderna

History tends to insist on remembering the case of Alfred Russel Wallace as one who, secondarily, supported Darwin's proposal. For the purposes of this work it is presented what Wallace called in his work Darwinism (1889) the basic elements of 'pure Darwinism', which would serve as the basis for what George John Romanes would call Neodarwinism, based on both Wallace's and August Weismann's work. These elements include ideas that are commonly associated exclusively with Charles Darwin's work, such as the biological concept of species, the different types of variation and their origin, the importance of natural selection as the preponderant mechanism to understand evolution, the rejection of Lamarckian mechanisms, among other points. From the above, the aims of this work are twofold: on the one hand, to rescue those basic concepts from Wallace's pure Darwinism; and on the other, to establish some possible explanations as to why the idea persists that Wallace's work does not seem to have been of importance for the development of Modern Synthesis

Genome: twisting stories with DNA.

In 1920, the German botanist Hans Winkler coined the concept of the 'genome'. This paper explores the history of a concept that has developed in parallel with advances in biology and supports novel and powerful heuristic biological research in the 21st century. From a structural interpretation (the genome as the haploid number of chromosomes), it has changed to keep pace with technological progress and new interpretations of the material of heredity. In the first place, the 'genome' was extended to include all the material in the nucleus, then the sum of all genes, and (with the discovery of the structure of DNA) the sum of the nucleotide base sequences. In the early 21st century, it has become a much more complex and central concept that has spawned the growing field of studies referred to as the 'omics'.