The idea that humans have an inner clock and that animal life is governed by circadian rhythms is commonplace today. The historical development of biological rhythm studies, or chronobiology as it is known today, has received scant attention within the historical disciplines, and yet biological rhythms research has radically transformed how we view living creatures, from relatively static organisms that stabilize themselves in a changing environment(homoeostasis) to temporally active, organic systems whose chemistries vibrate or oscillate in complex patterns that anticipate predictable changes in environmental factors such as light, heat,tides, and other periodic phenomena. Moreover, chronobiologist's own accounts of the developmental of their science often emphasize the history of their individual lines of inquiry; they do not grasp the broader historical picture of the emergence of biological rhythms as a scientific research area. This project is a two-year investigation of the history of chronobiology, developing expertise and protocols for training students in the history of recent science. A core group of historians, philosophers, and scientists will meet in a regularly-scheduled workshop at the University of Minnesota to define the historical limits and content of chronobiology, a relatively young field in the history of biology, but one that is contemporary with the better-studied environmental biology and developmental biology. The principal investigators will develop interactional expertise in the science through the collaborative workshop format, identify the key historical elements of the establishment of chronobiology as a new discipline, elaborate a research bibliography, locate and evaluate primary source documents pertaining to the leading researchers and their laboratories. The end result will be a working narrative of the history of rhythm studies and emergence of chronobiology as an autonomous scientific research area. At the culmination of the grant, the principal investigators will bring together historians, philosophers, and scientists to present the results of individual studies, which are intended for publication. These steps will contribute to the long term goal of training students in the methods required to do historical research on this and comparable recent sciences.
Research on biological rhythms has fundamentally changed biologists' view of organic systems. Once dominated by the doctrine of homoeostasis, which assumed that the internal milieus of cells and bodies are regulated to maintain a relative constancy despite external environmental changes, this research has demonstrated that organisms from cyanobacteria to higher primates exist in a temporal framework, in which key variables are not regulated to a normal value (e.g. blood pressure) but to a normal pattern of change in time, a rhythm. This realization has affected scientific research (sampling times, time-sensitive evalutation of data, etc.) and produced some important outcomes for medicine (e.g. time-adjusted dosing for asthma, cancer), agriculture (photoperiodic hastening of maturation, time-adjusted application of pesticides, nutrients, etc.), and animal husbandry (photoperiodic hastening of reproduction, egg laying, etc.) and promises to revolutionize personal medicine as ambulatory monitoring and automated reporting devices come into use. In the workplace, research into the short term effects of desynchronization on efficiency, produced by extreme work shifts and rapid travel across multiple time zones, has been complemented by consideration of desynchronization itself as a pathology. Historical documentation of this field is undeveloped. Much has been written by the scientists involved, by science writers, and by popularizers, but only one significant academic article has been published in the mainstream history of science and medicine literature prior to the beginning of this research grant. The necessity for proper study of the development of biological rhythms research, as with any other scientific field, is clear: Scientists documenting their own field tend to produced partisan accounts that reflect their research agendas, their breadth of reading in the field, and narratives that have themselves become traditional through retelling at scientific meetings and other venues. Important contributions are sometimes neglected, misinterpreted, or forgotten, and minor contributions or episodes unduly emphasized. Careful, sustained, historically-sensitive research into the historical record is essential for documenting this scientific development in depth and with equanimity, which is the assignment of the historian of science. Indeed, one result from this grant is the realization of the important role played by the synergy between scientists' presentation of their work and its interpretation by popular science writers and journalists in shaping this new field of scientific research. From Biological Rhythm Studies to Chronobiology was intended as a 2-year exploration, a mapping-out of how such a historical undertaking should begin -- its scope and the basic historical contours of the science: major persons, research laboratories, funding agencies, research questions, controversies, technologies, organizational aspects, journals, public exposures, and more. To attain these goals the Principal Investigator and collaborators organized a faculty workshop, a graduate reading seminar, an undergraduate research seminar, an undergraduate biology and history course, and the first conference on the history of biological rhythms research, which brought scientists, historians, and philosophers together for a two-day exploration (11-12 May 2012) of views on what this history might entail. Explorations of ways to preserve historical materials were begun and oral interviews of leading scientists were video-recorded for deposition in a publicly-accessible digital repository. Several existing archival collections were surveyed, a preliminary website was constructed, and contacts within the scientific communities were established. What will become a stream of historical scholarship devoted to the history of this scientific field has been initiated as an outcome of this initial exploration: One paper has been submitted for publication, another is in process, and two more are planned; Seven public academic presentations have been made by the Principal Investigator (PI) and project collaborators and three more are scheduled for 2013. Preparation of a monograph on the development of the "biological clockwork" as a guiding and contested conception in the development of biological rhythms has begun. The orientation, organization, and specific historical research conducted under the auspices of this grant have provided a foundation for a new subject within the history of science.
