Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Panpsychic Organicism: Sewall Wright’s Philosophy for Understanding Complex Genetic Systems

  • Published:
Journal of the History of Biology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Sewall Wright first encountered the complex systems characteristic of gene combinations while a graduate student at Harvard’s Bussey Institute from 1912 to 1915. In Mendelian breeding experiments, Wright observed a hierarchical dependence of the organism’s phenotype on dynamic networks of genetic interaction and organization. An animal’s physical traits, and thus its autonomy from surrounding environmental constraints, depended greatly on how genes behaved in certain combinations. Wright recognized that while genes are the material determinants of the animal phenotype, operating with great regularity, the special nature of genetic systems contributes to the animal phenotype a degree of spontaneity and novelty, creating unpredictable trait variations by virtue of gene interactions. As a result of his experimentation, as well as his keen interest in the philosophical literature of his day, Wright was inspired to see genetic systems as conscious, living organisms in their own right. Moreover, he decided that since genetic systems maintain ordered stability and cause unpredictable novelty in their organic wholes (the animal phenotype), it would be necessary for biologists to integrate techniques for studying causally ordered phenomena (experimental method) and chance phenomena (correlation method). From 1914 to 1921 Wright developed his “method of path coefficient” (or “path analysis”), a new procedure drawing from both laboratory experimentation and statistical correlation in order to analyze the relative influence of specific genetic interactions on phenotype variation. In this paper I aim to show how Wright’s philosophy for understanding complex genetic systems (panpsychic organicism) logically motivated his 1914–1921 design of path analysis.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Agar, Wilfred E. 1943. A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism. Melbourne University Press

  • Allen, Garland E. 1983. “The Several Faces of Darwin: Materialism in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Evolutionary Theory.” D.S. Bendall (ed.), Evolution from Molecules to Men. Cambridge University Press, pp. 81–102

  • Allen, Garland 1984. “Thomas Hunt Morgan: Materialism and Experimentalism in the Development of Modern Genetics.” Social Research 51: 709–738

  • Armstrong E.F. 1924. Chemistry in the Twentieth Century: An Account of the Achievement and Present State of Knowledge in Chemical Science. London: Benn

    Google Scholar 

  • Bateson, William 1907. “Facts Limiting the Theory of Heredity.” Science 26: 649–660

    Google Scholar 

  • Bergson, Henri. 1911. Creative Evolution. A. Mitchell (trans.), Henry Holt & Co

  • Bergson, Henri. 1920. Mind-Energy: Essays and Lectures. H. W. Carr (trans.), Henry Holt & Co

  • Bernard, Claude. 1927. An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. H. C. Greene (trans.), Schuman Press

  • Canham, Marlene Rayner and Canham, Geoffroy Rayner 2002. “Past Times—Muriel Wheldale Onslow (1880–1932): Pioneer Plant Biochemist.” The Biochemist 24: 49–51

    Google Scholar 

  • Cannon, Walter B. 1932. The Wisdom of the Body. W. W. Norton & Co

  • Carr H. Wildon. 1922. A Theory of Monads. Macmillan & Co

  • Castle, William E. 1909. “Material Basis of the Hereditary Factors.” Studies of Inheritance in Rabbits, Carnegie Institute of Washington No. 114

  • Clifford, William K. 1879. Lectures and Essays v2. L. Stephen and F. Pollack (eds.), Macmillan & Co

  • Cock, Alan G. 1973. “William Bateson, Mendelism and Biometry.” Journal of the History of Biology 6: 1–36

    Google Scholar 

  • Cross, Stephen J. and Albury, William R. 1987. “Walter B. Cannon, L. J. Henderson, and the Organic Analogy.” Osiris 3: 165–192

  • Crow, James F. 1982. “Sewall Wright, the Scientist and the Man.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 25: 279–294

  • Crow, James F.1984. “The Founders of Population Genetics.” A. Chakravarti (ed.), Human Population Genetics: The Pittsburgh Symposium. Van Nostrand Reinhold, pp. 177–194

  • Crow, James F. 1990. “Sewall Wright’s Place in Twentieth-Century Biology.” Journal of the History of Biology 23: 57–89 [republished. 1992. S. Sarkar (ed.), The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics: a Centenary Reappraisal. Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 167–200]

  • Driesch, Hans. 1929. The Science and Philosophy of the Organism. 2nd ed A.&C. Black Publishing Co

  • Fisher R.A. 1918. Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 52: 399–433

    Google Scholar 

  • Fisher R.A. 1922. On The Dominance Ratio Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 42: 321–341

    Google Scholar 

  • Fleming, Donald 1984. “Walter B. Cannon and Homeostasis.” Social Research 51: 609–640

  • Gerard, Ralph. 1940. “Organic Freedom.” Ruth Nanda (ed.), Freedom; its Meaning. Harcourt, Brace & Co

  • Gibbs, J. Willard. 1876–1878. On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances Connecticut. Academy of Arts and Sciences

  • Griesemer James R. 1990. Material Models in Biology PSA 2: 79–93

    Google Scholar 

  • Griesemer James R. 1991. Must Scientific Diagrams Be Eliminable? The Case of Path Analysis Biology and Philosophy 6: 155–180

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haldane J.S. 1884. Life and Mechanism. Mind 9: 27–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haldane, J.S.1917. Organism and Environment. Yale University Press

  • Haraway, Donna J. 1976. Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors of Organicism in Twentieth-Century Developmental Biology. Yale University Press

  • Heidelberger, M. 2004. Nature From Within: Gustav Theodor Fechner and His Psychophysical Worldview. University of Pittsburgh Press

  • Henderson, L.J. 1913. Fitness of the Environment. Macmillan & Co

  • Henderson, L.J.1917. Order of Nature. Cambridge University Press

  • Henderson, L.J. 1928. Blood: a Study in General Physiology. Yale University Press

  • Hodge, M.J.S. 1992. “Biology and Philosophy (Including Ideology): A Study of Fisher and Wright.” S. Sarkar (ed.), The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics: a Centenary Reappraisal. Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 231–293

  • Li C.C. 1956. The Concept of Path Coefficient and Its Impact on Population Genetics Biometrics 12: 190–210

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lillie, Ralph S. 1945. General Biology and the Philosophy of Organism. University of Chicago Press

  • Mayr, Ernst and Provine, William B. (eds.) 1980. The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology. Harvard University Press

  • Mayr Ernst 1959. Where Are We? Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 24: 1–4

    Google Scholar 

  • Montgomery, Edmund. 1880. “The Unity of the Organism.” Mind 5: 318–336, 465–489

  • Moore, Benjamin. 1912. The Origin and Nature of Life. Henry Holt & Co

  • Needham, Joseph. 1943. Time; The Refreshing River. Allen & Unwin

  • Norton B.J. 1975a. Biology and Philosophy: The Methodological Foundations of Biometry Journal of the History of Biology 8: 85–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norton B.J. 1975b. Metaphysics and Population Genetics: Karl Pearson and the Background to Fisher’s Multi-factorial Theory of Inheritance. Annals of Science 32: 537–553

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norton B.J. 1978. Karl Pearson and Statistics: the Social Origin of Scientific Innovation Social Studies of Science 8: 3–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Pearson, Karl. 1911. The Grammar of Science, 3rd ed. Macmillan & Co

  • Pitt G.A.J. 2001. Liverpool: the Early Years of Biochemistry Biochemical Society Transactions 31: 16–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Porter, Theodore M. 1986. The Rise of Statistical Thinking. Princeton University Press

  • Porter, Theodore M.2004. Karl Pearson: the Scientific Life in a Statistical Age. Princeton University Press

  • Provine, William B. 1971. The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics. University of Chicago Press [reprint edition. 2001. University of Chicago Press]

  • Provine, William B.1978. “The Role of Mathematical Population Geneticists in the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s.” Studies in the History of Biology 2: 167–192

    Google Scholar 

  • Provine, William B.1986. Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. University of Chicago Press

  • Punnett R.C. 1950. Early Days of Genetics Heredity 4: 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Rader, Karen A. 1998. “‘The Mouse People’: Murine Genetics Work at the Bussey Institution, 1909–1936.” Journal of the History of Biology 31: 327–354

    Google Scholar 

  • Rader, Karen A. 2004. Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900–1955. Princeton University Press

  • Reed, Edward S. 1997. From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to William James. Yale University Press

  • Richards, Robert J. 1987. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. University of Chicago Press

  • Ritter, William E. 1919. The Unity of the Organism or the Organismal Conception of Life, 2 vols. Badger Press

  • Ruse, Michael. 2004. “Adaptive Landscapes and Dynamic Equilibrium: The Spencerian Contribution to Twentieth-Century American Evolutionary Biology.” A. Lusting, R.J. Richards and M. Ruse (eds.), Darwinian Heresies. Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–150

  • Russett, Cynthia E. 1966. The Concept of Equilibrium in American Social Thought. Yale University Press

  • Sarkar, Sahotra (ed.) 1992. The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics: A Centenary Reappraisal. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science v142. Kluwer Academic Publishers

  • Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty. 1996. Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Princeton University Press

  • Troland, Leonard T. 1922. “Psychophysics as Related to the Mysteries of Physics and Metaphysics.” Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 12: 141–162

    Google Scholar 

  • Waddington, C.H. 1939. Introduction to Modern Genetics. Macmillan

  • Weir J.A. 1994. Harvard, Agriculture, and the Bussey Institution Genetics 136: 1227–1231

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitehead, Alfred N. 1925. Science and the Modern World. Macmillan

  • Whitehead, Alfred N. 1929. Process and Reality. Cambridge University Press

  • Wilson, Margaret D. 1999. Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy. Princeton University Press

  • Wright Sewall 1917. The Average Correlation Within Subgroups of a Population Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 7: 532–535

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1918. On the Nature of Size Factors Genetics 3: 367–374

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1920. The Relative Importance of Heredity and Environment in Determining the Piebald Pattern of Guinea Pigs Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 6: 320–332

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1921. Correlation and Causation Journal of Agricultural Research 20: 557–585

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1931. Evolution in Mendelian Populations Genetics 16: 97–159

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1932. The Roles of Mutation, Inbreeding, Crossbreeding and Selection in Evolution Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Genetics 1: 356–366

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1934. The Method of Path Coefficients Annals of Mathematical Statistics 5: 161–215

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1935. The Emergence of Novelty: A Review of Lloyd Morgan’s ‘Emergent’ Theory of Evolution Journal of Heredity 26: 369–373

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1941. Review of A Philosophy of Science, by W. J. Werkmeister. The American Biology Teacher 3: 276–278

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1953. “Gene and Organism.” Presidential Address to the American Society of Naturalists (Sept. 9, 1952) American Naturalist 87: 5–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall 1959. “Genetics and the Hierarchy of Biological Science.” Presidential Address to the 10th International Congress of Genetics (Aug., 20, 1958) Science 130: 959–965

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall. 1964. “Biology and the Philosophy of Science.” Monist 48: 265–290 [republished. 1964. W.L. Reese and E. Freeman (eds.), The Hartshorne Festschrift: Process and Divinity. Open Court, pp. 101–125]

  • republished. 1964. W. L. Reese and E. Freeman (eds.), The Hartshorne Festschrift: Process and Divinity. Open Court, pp. 101–125

  • Wright Sewall. 1968. Evolution and the Genetics of Populations: Genetics and Biometric Foundations v1. University of Chicago Press

  • Wright Sewall. 1975. “Panpsychism and Science.” J.E. Cobb, Jr. and D.R. Griffin (eds.), Mind in Nature. University Press of America, pp. 79–88

  • Wright Sewall 1978a. The Relation of Livestock Breeding to Theories of Evolution Journal of Animal Science 46: 1192–1200

    Google Scholar 

  • Wright Sewall. 1978b. Evolution and the Genetics of Populations: Variability Within and Among Natural Populations v4. University of Chicago Press

  • Wright Sewall 1980. Genic and Organismic Selection Evolution 34: 825–843

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yule G. Udny, Filon L.N.G. 1936. Karl Pearson. 1857–1936 Obituary Notice of the Fellows of the Royal Society 2: 71–110

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of the History of Science, Physical Sciences, Room 628, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019-0315, USA

    David M. Steffes

Authors
  1. David M. Steffes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David M. Steffes.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Steffes, D.M. Panpsychic Organicism: Sewall Wright’s Philosophy for Understanding Complex Genetic Systems. J Hist Biol 40, 327–361 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-006-9105-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-006-9105-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation