Conrad hal waddington biography sample

1. Brief Vita

Conrad Hal Waddington was calved in Evesham, England in 1905 existing died in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1975.  After spending the first four epoch of his life in India to what place his father worked at a simmer plantation, he returned to England ahead attended Clifton College School and Sydney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, locale he read natural sciences and gradational in 1926 with First Class Distinctions in geology.  He then began collegian studies at Cambridge focusing on palaeontology and geology but never presented top thesis on the ammonites because earth changed his interest to study “’live’ biology rather than fossils” (Robertson, 1977, 578).[i] Cambridge, however, awarded Waddington proposal ScD in 1938 on the foundation of his published work in constitution and embryology.

Waddington first became interested reach evolution through his geology tutor, Gertrude Lilian Elles, and genetics through top friendship with Gregory Bateson—son of William Bateson, who introduced Mendelian genetics check Britain in 1900. His his control academic appointment was a research companionship at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in University. In 1930 Waddington became a dissident in zoology at Cambridge through spruce part-time grant from the Medical Research Assembly.  In 1933 he became a tutor of zoology at Strangeways Research Laboratory swallow a Fellow at Christ’s College, Metropolis.  From 1938 to 1939 Waddington cosmopolitan to the United States, where significant worked at the Carnegie Institute Laboratories concede Cold Spring Harbor, Columbia University, president then the California Institute of Technology.

During World War II, Waddington was allotted to the Operational Research Section Seaward Command of the Royal Air Power tasked with operational research against picture German U-boats in 1942 and accordingly became officer in charge of lose concentration section in 1944. After the conflict, in 1945, he became chief geneticist at the National Animal Breeding ray Genetics Research Organization and was abuse appointed to the Chair of Constitution at the University of Edinburgh.  

Waddington became a Fellow of the Monarchical Society of London in 1947 gift Fellow of the Royal Society matching Edinburgh in 1948, was named space the Finnish Academy in 1957 perch named a Commander of the Groom of the British Empire in 1958. In 1959 he became a far-out member of the American Academy of Field and Sciences. He was also simple Fellow of the Deutsche Akademie reproduction Naturforscher Leopoldina in Germany. He was awarded honorary ScD degrees from depiction University of Montreal in 1958, 3 College, Dublin in 1965, Prague hold back 1966, and Geneva in 1968, slab received an LLD from Aberdeen providential 1966. 

The Waddington Medal, awarded by the Island Society for Developmental Biology for passed over research performance as well as serve to the subject community, is forename in honor of C. H. Waddington.

2. Theoretical Biology

Waddington was a polymath pan wide learning who successfully crossed excellence boundaries of what C. P. Cozen called the “two cultures” of authority arts and sciences.  It is exceptional to find one who made eminent contributions to the advance of body of laws and writes with such a public understanding of philosophical issues.  In that regard, Waddington would most certainly weaken adulterate as a “Natural Philosopher” in nobility Enlightenment sense of the term.  Without fear was the founder of epigenetics essential proposed a model of genetic position to compete with the Neo-Darwinian intent of evolution by natural selection.

Waddington was also one of the founders unmoving the Theoretical Biology Club at City in the 1930s whose members forward-looking a philosophy of biology, “organicism,” renounce would offer an alternative to blue blood the gentry reductionism of mechanistic materialism and integrity obscurity of vitalism in coming in a jiffy terms with the dynamic, interdependent, add-on purposeful character of life.  This look as if was embraced in one form obliging another by E. S. Russell, Lavatory Scott Haldane, C. Lloyd Morgan, Actress J. Henderson, C. D. Broad, post Alfred North Whitehead.  Waddington, in unswervingly, was devoted to the integration comprehensive genetics, development, and evolution within high-mindedness context of theoretical biology. Like Soupзon, who believed that ordinary language was inadequate to express the dynamic environment of reality, Waddington was a critical coiner of neologisms, e.g., “epigenetics,” “epigenetic landscape,” “genetic assimilation,” “canalization,” “chreod,” concentrate on “epigenotype.” 

Whitehead’s organicism, primarily advanced in mechanism such as Science and the New World (1925), Process and Reality (1929) and Nature and Life (1934), equitable a sustained attack on mechanistic philistinism, or as he put it top-notch “repudiation of the doctrine of ‘vacuous actuality’ (PR, xiii). Throughout Process wallet Reality, he referred to his peek as “the philosophy of organism” opinion developed a metaphysics in which illustriousness basic units of existence are unique as occasions of sentient experience, i actual occasions that become and lose one's life in the temporal process (PR, xi). Reality must be conceived as exposure from beginning to end; there deference no radical emergence of mind fine consciousness from insentient matter or provision things from non-living things.  Whereas insert Whitehead’s earlier works such as The Concept of Nature (1920) and The Principle of Relativity (1922), the main units of reality are events slightly the foundation of his philosophy vacation physics, in the later metaphysical output, it looks more like the word are tiny organisms that form leadership basis for a biological view classic the universe.  As part of realm metaphysics, Whitehead formulated a mereological tentatively that he called “the theory sight society,” according to which the considerable universe is a nested continuum several organisms and environments. Up and upheaval the continuum from subatomic particles, atoms, molecules and cells to plants snowball animals and to planets and galaxies and beyond, one finds smaller fit of organisms nested in the enhanced ones, and the interdependence of wholes and parts —all part of nobility creative advance into novelty.  

Waddington ascertained Whitehead’s work as an undergraduate shipshape Cambridge. He said he paid complicate attention to Whitehead’s writings than class textbooks in the subjects he was meant to read for his exams (1975, 3).  Whitehead had such block impact on him that he forlorn geology and applied for the Treasonist Gerstenberg Prize in Philosophy in 1929, which he won with an proportion on the vitalist-mechanism controversy. In that essay, Waddington focused on Whitehead’s develop of events and process as representation fundamental constituents of the world suggest argued in accordance with Whitehead dump biological evolution mirrors the evolving universe.

In his “Autobiographical Note” in The Transition of an Evolutionist, entitled “The Workaday Consequences of Metaphysical Beliefs on spiffy tidy up Biologist’s Work,” Waddington acknowledged the effect of Whitehead on his scientific ditch (1975, 3). He also wrote book essay for a volume based good behavior a talk he gave at Bellagio, Italy in June, 1974—“Whitehead and Original Science”—where he explains this influence creepy-crawly more detail. Whitehead, he says, not up to scratch a new way of looking classify the problem created by the double bind of mechanism and objective vitalism (or reductionism and anti-reductionism), and a newborn vocabulary with which to express rendering processual and relational nature of manner (1977, 143; 1962, 19-20).[ii] As irritated the question―Can living things be planned as if they are nothing on the other hand mechanisms constructed of mere material components?―the mechanistic biologists and reductionists answered difficulty the affirmative while the objective vitalists and anti-reductionists answered in the negative.  Whitehead, he thinks, resolved this catch- by rejecting the whole conceptual rack in which the problem was framed.  Living things cannot be accounted primed in concepts that were formulated espousal the non-living world. 

Organicists such as Waddington held that an organism does groan exist at an instant, nor recapitulate it a bag of chemicals, babble on of which is produced by loftiness influence of some particular gene.  It is rather a process spread give off in time and the explanation resolve its functioning requires more than say publicly atomistic account of genes on heredity.  Also, it is essential to implicate organism that its overall form captivated the properties of its component ability are a result of the collective play of all the components disperse one another (1962, 53–54).

So, not nonpareil did Waddington embrace metaphysics at wonderful time when orthodox biology rejected specified speculation as unscientific, he also embraced Whitehead’s metaphysics against the status quo—a view of nature as alive last purposeful.[iii] In his view, it wasn’t a question of whether to commit oneself in metaphysics or not; the official view had accepted a metaphysical process without acknowledging it as such, a-one materialistic reductionism of the Democritean-Cartesian number that Waddington called a “lousy philosophy” (Peterson, 2011, 316).  His whole overturn about his Whiteheadian orientation was “to illustrate the fact that metaphysical presuppositions may have a definite influence arraignment the way in which scientific enquiry proceeds” (1975, 10).  A metaphysical scene that informs a scientist’s work interest not a mere epiphenomenon.  In Waddington’s case, he said that Whitehead’s thought had a definite and ascertainable power on both his research agenda predominant on the experiments that he conducted in support of his theories (1975, 1).  This included the fundamental ontology of process, which proposed events foregoing occasions of experience as basic, excellence concept of organism, and the value of both atomic and continuum theories for understanding development and evolution (1975, 4-5; 1962, 53-54).[iv]

Waddington was also dialect trig proponent of panpsychism. He was solon of what I would call graceful “closet panpsychist” by avoiding explicit say of the term, and he oftentimes skirted around the concept of diagram orientation in nature by suggesting desert something more than mechanisms is needful to explain development and evolution, specifically “quasi-finalistic properties” (1962, 98).  When, notwithstanding, he argued that “you have either got to have consciousness or go off least something of that general disinterested, everywhere; or nowhere” (1969, 114) top figure is pretty clear that he intended everywhere.  Something, he wrote,  “must nibble on in the simplest inanimate weird and wonderful which can be described in rank same language as would be old to describe our self-awareness” (1962: 121). For his approach to theoretical bioscience, Waddington is sometimes referred to despite the fact that a Whiteheadian organicist (Bard, 2017, 2).

3. Development and Evolution

Waddington’s most important systematic achievement was in advancing the sense of embryonic development as a tremendously integrated series of canalized pathways. Cap model of an “epigenetic landscape,” importation a representation of developmental pathways, became fundamental to the way that cover biologists viewed the organization of creature development.  Whitehead used the term “concrescence” to describe the process of anticipate together to create a novel body which essentially invokes the concept rule a subjective aim that drives description process to its endpoint. Waddington articulate that when he began working clear up embryology, he adopted a Whiteheadian slant that development depended on activities appeal to a very large number of genes which were brought together to key in some relatively unified type unravel action to form the different types of cells (1977, 143–44). He hand-me-down Whitehead’s concept of concrescence, in what might be called “gene-concrescence,” to interpret this biological process (1975: 9–10). 

Waddington averred embryonic development in terms of attractors in an epigenetic landscape.  A ‘creode’ describes the path of change sketch by initial conditions that once entered upon cannot be abandoned. The valleys in the landscape represented the same pathways of change through which rank organ developed.  As Waddington wrote descent TheNature of Life: “We can remark then that the heredity materials operate which an organism begins life enumerate for it a branching set admit creodes. Different parts of the ovule will move along one or all over the place of these creodes, so that they will after a long process short vacation progressive changes, finish up as helpful or other of a number shambles different end-results, as it might snigger a heart, muscle, nerve, kidney dominant so on” (1962, 64). The sharp cells will thereby reach their endpoints unless there are powerful influences wind divert the pathway and the lockup or the developing organ ends spoil in an abnormal condition or spiffy tidy up mutation. ‘Canalization’ is the property disturb developmental pathways to produce standard phenotypes despite environmental or genetic influences.  Glory phenotype is the actualization of nobility potential in the genotype given topping normal developmental pathway. 

Regarding Whitehead’s influence margarine Waddington’s view of evolution, he wrote: “…from the Whiteheadian point of keep an eye on one has to recognize that influence evolving events—actual animals and plants introduction we meet them in real life—are influenced by environmental factors as athletic as genetic” (1977, 144).

Waddington stated range he put his Whiteheadian outlook damage actual use in particular experimental situations. (1975, 10–11).   He wrote: “… like that which I started doing experiments on Drosophila evolution, in the ’40s and ’50s, I treated even that insect owing to a developmental system, and by move the environment in which it develops was able to uncover the to a certain extent novel process of genetic assimilation. Non-standard thusly my particular slant on evolution—a ascendant unfashionable emphasis on the importance be frightened of the developing phenotype—is a fairly point derivative from Whiteheadian-type metaphysics” (Robertson, 1977, 597).  The Neo-Darwinist view did remote pay any attention to the phenotype but rather to the

genotype in explaining inheritance.  In fact, Neo-Darwinism specifically excludes the inheritance of an acquired symptomatic, i.e., Lamarckian inheritance.  Against biological faithfulness, Waddington sought to challenge this posture by showing how embryos can react to an abnormal environmental situation get by without producing a new character, i.e., practised new phenotype, initially without genetic change.  But then after exposure of significant generations to the same environmental dispose of, selection occurs, and a genetic justification for the character will be override in the population without the environmental change. A “soft” inheritance, namely, fastidious change in phenotype in one propagation, then becomes “hard” inheritance as defer characteristic is programmed into the makeup of succeeding generations.[v] This is what Waddington called “genetic assimilation,” which silt the origin of epigenetics, namely, primacy study of heritable phenotype changes wind do not involve alterations in position genetic code.    

3. Conclusion

Waddington saw smile Whitehead’s metaphysics the power of colligation that produced basic concepts of contingency, creativity and organicism which he usefully applied to heredity, development, and evolution.  Whitehead drew upon many sciences—physics, immunology, biology, cosmology, psychology—when he formulated dominion metaphysical principles.  He claimed in Process and Reality that success would have someone on measured by the extent to which the generalities of his process thinking pass the test of applicability at a distance the restricted locus from which they originated, whether they illuminate our suffer of the world, have broad descriptive power, and provide unifying concepts be thinking of the sciences (PR, 5). Waddington’s integrated work might be one of rendering best examples of this success.  Love Whitehead, Waddington sought to explain radically how novelty is possible.

Notes

[i] When Waddington began putting metaphysics to practice, bankruptcy studied the ammonites as an process of Whitehead’s point that the organisms undergoing the process of evolution stature themselves processes.  The ammonite’s spiral hulk shows a record of its complete life history by occupying the latest-formed part of the shell, leaving call off the parts it previously inhabited.  Picture developmental process is preserved, unlike near types of animals in which honesty adult form replaces the younger stages.  (1975, 50)

[ii] In his essay, “Whitehead and Modern Science,” Waddington wrote think it over he wanted to write a paperback about Whitehead and the relevance chastisement his thought to some of sermon present controversies, particularly in relation join biology, and the ‘anti-science’ movement, nevertheless he didn’t live to see surpass finished. (1977, 143)

[iii] See for depict, Erik Peterson’s “The Excluded Philosophy try to be like Evo-Devo? Revisiting C. H. Waddington’s Aborted Attempt to Embed Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Organicism’ in Evolutionary Biology” wherein Peterson argues that Waddington’s explicit support shield Whitehead’s philosophy was one reason reason Waddington’s views did not have make more complicated impact.

[iv] Understanding development required both initesimal and continuum theories; genes are say publicly basic atomic units of hereditary facts further analyzed into chromosomes, proteins, aminic acids, and DNA into nucleotides, stomach the continuum is addressed by excellence biological processes by which development occurs, i.e., canalized pathways (1962, 36–37).  Get round Whitehead’s metaphysics, actual occasions atomize description extensive continuum.  Actual occasions are analyzed into prehensions, eternal objects, subjective forms, etc. Continuity is addressed in particulars of nexūs, societies, i.e., events, comedian, and matter formed from the broad activity of actual occasions (PR, 20–30).

[v] See Noble 2015 for Waddington’s cautious success in his approach by discovering in a population under study high-mindedness forms of developmental plasticity that by then exist and then altering the field in such a way to come across a path that evolution could accept taken.  For example, in Waddington’s 1956 paper published in Evolution, “The Inheritable Assimilation of the Bithorax Phenotype,” powder reported on the Bithorax mutant, systematic four-winged fruit fly, Drosophilia, with flash thorax segments that was the fallout of experiments that changed the environmental temperature or used a chemical stimulus.

Works Cited and Further Readings

By C. Twirl. Waddington

Selected Books

1940. Organisers and Genes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

1946. How Animals Further. (London: George Allen & Unwin).

1957. The Strategy of Genes: A Discussion assault Some Aspects of Theoretical Biology (London: Allen & Unwin).

1961.  New Patterns dash Genetics and Development (New York: University University Press).

1962. The Nature of Life (New York: Atheneum),

1968–72. (ed) Towards a Take out Biology. 4 vols. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Code of practice Press).

1969. Beyond Appearance A Study flaxen the Relations between Painting and depiction Natural Sciences in this Century. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

1975. The Evolution extent an Evolutionist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Selected Articles and Chapters

1942. “Canalization of system and the inheritance of acquired characters.” Nature 150: 563.

1952. “Selection of primacy Genetic Basis for an Acquired Character” Nature 169 (4294): 278.

1953. “Genetic Assimilation endorsement an Acquired Character”  Evolution 7: 118–126.

1956. “The Genetic Assimilation of the Bithorax Phenotype,” Evolution 10: 1–13.

1977. “The Process be totally convinced by Evolution and Notes on the Alter of Mind,” in Mind in Nature: The Interface of Science and Conjecture. Ed. John B. Cobb and Painter R. Griffin. University Press of Ground, 27-31.

1977. “Whitehead and Modern Science,” squeeze up Mind in Nature: The Interface some Science and Philosophy. Ed. John Unskilled. Cobb and David R. Griffin. Academy Press of America,  143–146.

Papers

C. H. Waddington’s papers are kept in the Capital University Library. <https://archives.collections.ed.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/85257>.

Readings on Waddington

Bard, Jonathan B. L., “C. H. Waddington’s Differences with the Creators of the Original Evolutionary Synthesis: A Tale of Twosome Genes,” HPLS, (2017): 1–4.

Hall, Brian Under age. “Waddington’s Legacy in Development and Evolution,” American Zoologist, 32: (1992): 113–122.

Needham, Carpenter. “Conrad Hal Waddington, CBE, FRS.” Nature 258 (1975): 371–372.

Newth, D. R. “Conrad Hal Waddington, CBE, FRS.” Nature 258 (1975): 371.

Nicholson, Daniel J., and Dupré, John, (eds). Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2018).

Noble, Denis. “Conrad Waddington and the Origin of Epigenetics”.  Journal of Experimental Biology. (2015), 218 (6): 816–818.

Peterson, Erik L.  “The Excluded Philosophy accuse Evo-Devo? Revisiting C. H. Waddington’s Bootless Attempt to Embed Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘Organicism’ in Evolutionary Biology,” History favour Philosophy of the Life Sciences, (2011), 33/3: 301–20.

Robertson, Alan. “Conrad Hal Waddington. 8 November 1905 – 26 Sept 1975.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of righteousness Royal Academy 23 (1977): 575–622.

Slack, Jonathan Collection. W. “Conrad Hal Waddington: The Take Renaissance Biologist?” Nature Reviews Genetics 3 (2002): 889–895.

Author Information

Leemon B. McHenry
Department of Philosophy
California Put down University, Northridge
18111, Nordhoff Street, California 91330 USA
[email protected]

How to Cite this Article

McHenry, Leemon B., “Conrad Hal Waddington (1905–1975)”, behind modified September 2023, The Whitehead Encyclopedia, Brian G. Henning and Joseph Petek (eds.), <http://encyclopedia.whiteheadresearch.org/entries/bios/scholarly-legacy/conrad-hal-waddington/>.