This doctoral dissertation project is supported by the Science, Technology, and Society Program. The project focuses on the intellectual careers and relationships of Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and C. H. Waddington (1905-1975), individuals who traversed disparate fields (including anthropology, psychology, and information science from the 1920s through 1970s) and strived against what they perceived as tendencies toward hyper-specialization and reductionism in the social as well as life sciences. The dissertation will also consider the influence of evolutionary biology on these fields by way of Bateson and Waddington. The grant will support research and travel to three archives in the US and UK.
This study is relevant to the history, philosophy, and sociology of the life and social sciences for two reasons. It surveys the history of the Modern Synthesis, the integration of evolutionary theory with "reductionist" genetics achieved in the 1930s and its extension into the social sciences, against the evolutionary "organicism" advocated by Bateson and Waddington. by examining the formation of journals, institutes, etc., alongside unpublished correspondence, it contributes to our understanding both of interdisciplinarity and of the sociological process of marginalization that proponents of the organicist alternative experienced.
Bateson and Waddington aimed their theoretical worries about biological reductionism toward social and ecological problems including overpopulation, resource degradation, and sociobiology. The anti-reductionism endorsed by them, and their closest correspondents including Needham, Woodger, Mead, Erikson contributed to the retreat of scientific racism after World War II.
