Scott F. Gilbert
Edward Martin Laboratories of Biology
Department of Biology
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore, PA 19081 USA
"We are not seeing the end of the body, but rather the end of one kind of body and the beginning of another kind of body." --Emily Martin ( 1992)
Our selves/ Our bodies
In the academic debate about multiculturalism, the natural sciences are usually left out. This is a gross error. Given the roles that science plays in our cultural life, its importance as a culturally informed artifact, and its role as an export product, our discussions of multiculturalism are superficial if we do not attend to the conditions that permit and direct scientific enquiry. This becomes all the more obvious in the case of biology which has traditionally been central to our definitions of race, class, and gender and which structures our discussions of health and ecology. In this paper, I hope to present a framework for such a discussion of biology's role in multicultural studies, grounding it in the larger context of the body politic. The body politic paradigm allows us to bridge the space between our discussions of physical bodies, bodies of knowledge, and social bodies, and it will enable us to assimilate (digest?) new elements into the curriculum that "embodies" our academic ideals.
In illo tempore, once upon a time, there was a body. This body was the neural body. It thought, and therefore it was. Indeed, this body knew who it was and what it wanted. The brain was the command center of this embodiment, and the nervous system empowered the rest of the body to do its bidding. The neural body was structured on strictly Cartesian coordinates, and the Y axis was the Great Chain of Being. At the apex resided the brain with its God-given rational soul and self-knowledge. At the base lay the genitals. The heart of man was torn between these two poles: reason and emotion; intellect and passion; the mens of God and the mentula of Satan; the sphere of divine spirit and the corruption of base matter. Through nerves and hormones originating at the brainstem, the head dictated the production regimen of the body. This body is the Fordist body whose death has been proclaimed by Jonathan Parry[2] and Emily Martin[3]. The neural axis was also seen as the axis of evolution, and we cerebro-manuals were at its apex. Like the brain atop the spinal cord, we felt ourselves positioned at the control center of nature.
Sociological discussions of the body metaphor assume that science has a single and uniform concept of the body, and it is usually the standard neural body that is the basis for the body politic analogy. However, after World War II, the authority of the neural body has become shared with two other views of the body, two other claimants to "selfhood". In addition to the neural body, there now exist the immune and genetic bodies. Each of these bodies privileges a different notion of identity ("self") that corresponds to a different type of body politic.[4] When one makes the "body politic" or "body of knowledge" metaphor, one is extrapolating a particular type of body into the social or academic sphere. The neural body privileges a polity defined by laws, mores, and culture and corresponds to the traditional aperspectival view of science. The immune body privileges a polity defined by defensible borders and corresponds to a view of science wherein science is a product of Western culture that preserves and defends the interests of the dominant groups of that culture. The genetic body privileges ethnicity and race as the bases for polities and corresponds to a view of science that sees science as the mainspring and major determinant of culture. In addition, there is a fourth "phenotypic" body that attempts to mediate and integrate the other three. While the first three form our major images of the body, the fourth stands opposed to the others as a counterimage.
The bodily derived metaphors are among the most central to our perceptions of reality,[5] and each of these views of the body has important consequences when extrapolated into political and social spheres. I hope to demonstrate that our perceptions of social problems and our views of science depend to a great extent upon which bodily concept is being employed. Moreover, the ascendency of the genetic body in recent years has potentially far reaching effects on our science curriculum and our discussions of social change.
The Neural Body
When the notion of the neural body eventually died, its flesh deconstructed about it. The body resurrected from its ashes is no longer the neural body. I will argue that there are now four selves in the present image of the body, each with its own nature and center. There is, of course, the reconstructed neural body. Although it retains many of its nineteenth century characteristics, it is now a much more mature body which privileges the interactions between the brain and the other organs. The monarchy has moved from being absolute to being constitutional. The monarch rules by the consent of the governed and is not uninfluenced by the heart, guts, gonads, and kidneys. The contemporary neural body is an integrated system, but the brain--with its powers of thought, memory, and volition--is still seen as the center of identity. If one were to transplant a brain into a new body, the self-identity would stay with the brain.
The Immune Body
However, since World War II, three other bodies are now distinguishable. These bodies had always been part of our consciousness, but they were considered subsidiary and servant to the neural body. Our second body is the immune body. This is a body that separates us from the other bodies that inhabit the globe and which prohibits our fusing with other entities. The immune body is that which determines our Hobbesian selfness and is in potential conflict with every other body. I am not you, and were your body tissues to be grafted to mine, the graft would not take.[6] Indeed, immunology has been described as "the science of Self-Nonself discrimination."[7] The boundary for the immune body is not the brain, but the skin (which rejects transplants). There is no "center" analogous to the brain in the immune body. Rather, the cells of the immune system pervade the entire body.[8]
This immune body had not been noticed before the 1940s because there did not seem to be any alternatives to the type of description used for the body. Whereas we see the "dumb" animals all around us, and therefore can recognize our neural bodies as being different from theirs, we did not have any other model for the immune body. The immune body was not an independent entity, but merely a way of preserving the integrity of the neural body. The neural body was pure but susceptible to outside noxious infections. This was reflected in our concern over the diseases that threatened our body politic. They were infectious diseases: We "quarantined" Cuba and fought "Communist infiltration". During the McCarthy era, people could become contaminated by ideas.
Only in the 1960s, when views of what was internal and external to the self underwent a major revolution, and when antibiotics and vaccines had alleviated most social fears about infection in the Northern hemisphere, did the prevalent notion of the immune self change.[9] The disease of the body politic went from infection to cancer. In this latter trope, the immune self is very different. Unlike Sontag,[10] I see a radical break between the metaphors of infection and cancer. The infection model assumes that the body is initially pure, and is susceptable to noxious, external agents. The cancer model made no such assumption. In fact, it posited the opposite. The danger to the body is that a normal part of the body has escaped its normal regulatory network and has become autonomous. The danger was not from without; it was from within. Cancer was a disease that reflects lack of control. Something that was normal for the body had escaped regulation and was expanding unchecked--the military-industrial complex, media, permissiveness, youth. As Walt Kelly remarked, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
But cancer did not remain the predominant disease mode within the body politic metaphor. In the late 1970s, as the population of the Northern world was growing older, the model of cancer gave way to a model of decrepitude and senescence. The infrastructure is crumbling. Expect less. Like Greece, Rome, and Great Britain before it, America had had its day in the sun and was now in decline. We were thinking recessionally, and we became fascinated with the passage of the British Raj (and were treated to movies such as Ghandi, The Jewel in the Crown, and A Passage to India). Newspapers and magazines were full of stories of bridge collapses, tunnels needing repair, and the withering away of our railroad, highway, and airline systems. Although portions of the cancer (and to some degree the infection) trope still continued to inform our notion of the the "disease of the body politic", decrepitude and senescence came to play a larger and more substantial role.
This concern with the decline of the body politic was mirrored in our concern over the physical body. For our physical body was also in decline, and the problem was not the fast-growing cancers, but the slow but steady collapse of our own infrastructure. In the early 1980s, there were twice as many Americans over the age of 65 as there were as late as 1950, and those baby boomers who would never trust anyone over 30 were turning gray themselves. Jane Fonda switched her activism from international politics to the means of preventing bodily decay. Even former campus radicals became concerned with having a fit body. The specific debilitating disease we chose to mirror our anxieties was a particular frightening one. From the late 1970s to early 1980s, there was a large increase of interest in Alzheimer's Disease. Alzheimer's disease reflected very intense anxieties. Not only were we getting older physically, but our minds were going as well. We had no history, no memory of the past.
This Alzheimer's model did not last long, because the 1980s saw a new disease to the immune body--AIDS.[11] AIDS combines several tropes of the disease to the body politic. First, it is seen as a disease that features decrepitude. Like Alzheimer's disease, AIDS is a disease of wasting away. Look at the pictures of Rock Hudson before and during AIDS. Recall the photographs of all those young people in wheelchairs. The decrepitude metaphor is clearly a critical part of the AIDS trope. Second, AIDS is a disease characterized by lack of control over one's bodily identity. People with AIDS find their bodies unable to separate from the world around them. Organisms that had been external become internal. The peripheral is allowed to become central. Third, the AIDS trope contains an infectious component, the nidus of which is in the Third World enclaves (inner cities and, originally, Haiti) within the Northern body politic. Just as an infection is seen as becoming part of the body, so the metaphor can be transferred to those people constituting these enclaves.[12] Thus, the AIDS model resonates between (a) the cancer metaphor, because it stresses what is internal to the body politic, (b) the Alzheimer's model, because it stresses decrepitude within the body politic, and (c) the infection model, because it can identify elements of the "neural" body politic which were originally "foreign" to it and which are threatening to it. The neural body is not the only "body" we have. The immune body is obviously important when it comes to defining our political relationships. But these are not our only two bodies.
The Genetic Body
Our third body/self is the genetic body. We are what (who?) our genes tell us we are. It is our repertoire of phenotypes. The body is seen as but an epiphenomenon of its genes. The center of this body's identity is not within the brain or the lymphocytes. Rather, it lies within the nucleus of every somatic cell of the body. This is the identity of the body sought by the human genome project. It is the identity of the body celebrated by the anti-Choice brigades who tell us that science has fixed the moment of individuality at the moment of conception. Whereas the neural and immune bodies can learn and change, the genetic body cannot. This gives it a more primal immediacy than the neural or immune bodies. The discovery of new human genes makes the front page of newspapers because of the claim that the genes determine who we are.
The radial axis of the genetic body is, as in the neural body, the Great Chain. The chromosomes of the nucleus are perceived of as being the blueprints--the idea--upon which the body is constructed. It is the "executive suite of the cell";[13] while the cytoplasm is but the factory floor. The nucleus is unchanging, while the cytoplasm is always bringing in new matter and getting rid of the old. Genes are the unmoved movers of the bodily cosmos. While the bodily substance changes constantly through metabolism, the identity of the body stays the same thanks to its unchanging nuclei. Like the neural body and the immune body, the genetic body concerns information, not substance. Nelkin and Lindee[14] have shown the similarities of the genetic self to the Medieval soul. Not only does our genome determine our physical and psychological characters, but it can survive the death of the body and be the basis for bodily resurrection. This is what Jurassic Park was all about.
Needless to say, these concepts of the body are not coincident. Indeed, they provide three distinctly different representations of the body. This is also seen in the late twentieth century concepts of the body politic. Is the body politic the genetic, immune, or neural body? That is: Is a body politic, such as a country, defined by the ethnicity of its people (genetic), its ability to defend itself against neighboring countries (immune), or its culture and mores (neural)? Similarly, in the debate over abortion, is the self to be defined genetically (when the nuclei fuse at conception), neurally (when the EEG pattern begins around the seventh month), or immunologically (when the separation between mother and baby occurs at birth)? Interestingly, it is only very rarely (if at all) that these three concepts have the same borders, and most of the wars presently being waged (for instance, in Russia, the United Kingdom, the Near East, and Africa) are due to the nonalignment of these boundaries and the belief that all three should be in register.
The Phenotypic Body
The fourth self stands in contrast to the other three. This is the phenotypic body. It is all these three bodies plus the flesh, bones, organs, and tissues. It is the lovers' body of flesh and substance. It is the cripple's body, it is the body of all those undergoing marked physical changes. This is the body created by those sciences which celebrate reciprocal interactions and emergent properties of systems--embryology and ecology.
There has been a long history of embryologists (notably Oscar Hertwig, N. J. Berrill, P. Weiss, and C. H. Waddington; presently B. C. Goodwin, H. F. Nijhout, and myself, among others) who have argued against the linear, univectoral, notion that genes determine the character of either cells or selves. The fate of a cell is determined in the body by its interactions with other cells, and we are walking on cells that could have been used for thinking had they been in another part of the embryo. Rather than genetic determinism (or neural determinism), we have proposed that nothing is determined except by interactions. Hertwig, Tauber and Gilbert and Borish[15] explicitly use this "epigenetic" approach to model both the body (which forms embryologically by cell-cell interactions) and the self (which forms epigenetically through interactions with others) in addition to the autonomous directions given by the nuclear genes.
However, contemporary biology is largely controlled by the genetic model of life, and even neurobiology and immunology have been redefined as gene-based sciences. This transition from being phenotypic sciences to being genotypic sciences was made even earlier for physiology, embryology, and evolutionary biology.[16] Those which resist this "molecularization" (notably ecology, paleontology, and some aspects of embryology and taxonomy) are marginalized. Moreover, we still have taboos about discussing the physical body and prefer to frame our discourse around the other three selves. Consider, for example, contemporary discussions on homosexuality. One would expect that such discourse would be primarily informed by the sexual body. Instead, one finds arguments concerning "gay genes", "gay brains", and, of course, the "gay" immune system. The same can probably be said for most academic discussions of women (although I suspect that in both cases, this is changing). Nevertheless, this interactive, phenotypic, continually self-creating body is one where power relationships have diminished and where an organicist wholism prevails: the body as an integrated network of gene and flesh, brain and gonad, inside and outside.
At this moment, there are fascinating areas of genetics, immunology, and neurobiology that are returning to epigenetic interactive models.[17] This is especially true of immunology where the immune network theories have revised the internal-external system that had been the hallmark of immunology and which remains its main legacy to political literature. As it stands now, though, this phenotypic body is not usually a major component of our corporate self; rather, it is perceived as an epiphenomenon of the other bodies.
Four Bodily Representations of Science
Presently, there exists a tension between natural science and intercultural learning that is reflected in Sandra Harding's[18] dictum, "Science is politics by other means, and it also generates reliable information about the empirical world."[19] How can sciences become part of a multicultural curriculum? Here, the body politic metaphor can be extremely helpful, for the sciences are said to be (among other things) "bodies" of knowledge. But what type of body? I would depict science as oscillating/resonating among the four types of bodies discussed above, and each of these bodies privileges a different relationsip between science and the larger culture. Like the physical and social bodies, science is all four of these bodes simultaneously, and any view of science that does not include all of them is incomplete. By seeing science as oscillating/resonating among these four bodily representations, we can see how natural science can become an integral feature in a multicultural curriculum.
Science as a "Neural" Body of Knowledge
The neural view of science is that science finds acultural truths. In this body of knowledge, science is disembodied thought, and it is seen to provide knowledge which is not culturally situated. This aculturalism is the flip-side of multiculturalism. The truths of science are independent of their material circumstances. Laws of science should be true anywhere on earth, indeed, anywhere in the universe. The laws should be ahistorical, acultural, and apersonal. The simplicity and starkness of the laboratory report originated in the attempt to rid science of cultural specificity, thus allowing devout Protestants such as Newton, Kepler, and Boyle to use the insights and data of Catholics such as Copernicus, Descartes, and Galileo.[20] Given that the conclusions are acultural, science welcomes anyone into it. As Galileo exclaimed, "Anyone can see through my telescope." The authors of scientific papers are supposed to be culturally interchangeable. It does not matter whether R. E. Lee is a Virginia gentleman or a Chinese woman, since the methods used should eliminate any cultural biases. The list of Nobel Prize winners in science is a wonderful mix of ethnic names and reflects the inclusiveness of science. This has been the traditional view of science; and "bad" science is said to result from the imposition of cultural norms on objective investigations.
Science as an "Immune" Body of Knowledge
In the immunological view of science, science is used for the construction, maintenance, and defense of the body politic. Here, science is a prime example of Western culture; and despite its belief that it is universal, it is actually extremely parochial.[21] First, the notion of an acultural, ahistorical, apersonal law is a distinctly Western idea, derived from the Scriptural traditions of a transcendent deity whose laws run the Universe even in the absence of human beings. Such a universal and apersonal law is a foreign concept to most traditional cultures. The origin and early development of modern science is closely intertwined with the emergence of modern society in the West, and as Restivo has summarized, "The scientific revolution was one of an interrelated set of parallel organizational responses within the major spheres of Western Europe from the fifteenth century onwards (including Protestantism in the religious sphere and modern capitalism in the economic sphere) to an underlying set of ecological, demographic, and political economic conditions."[22] Thus, contemporary science is a Western product grounded in the Western sociopolitical views of nature. Second, science fails to meet its ideal of aculturality. Obvious cases have been Social Darwinism, scientific racism, scientific antifeminism, and Aryan physics. Science often defines race and gender in light of the opinions of scientists (who, until very recently, have been overwhelmingly male, economically privileged, and white). At the beginning of this century, American and European biologists declared that there was a graduated scale of humanity, and that certain anatomical features showed that black males were on the same level as white females and white children--i.e., lower than that of white men. Moreover, some of these texts suggested that we treat such people as we would treat animals.[23] In 1972, the major textbook in mammalian developmental biology contained the following passage:
In all systems that we have considered, maleness means mastery. The Y chromosome over the X, the medulla over the cortex, androgen over estrogen. So physiologically speaking, there is no justification for believing in the equality of the sexes.[24]
Less obvious politicizations of biology can be seen in the sexist and classist description of cells. There is a history of depicting the nucleus (and sperm) as active, rational, and executive, while the cytoplasm (and egg) are depicted as passive, changeable, and proletarian.[25] Western cultural norms are also seen reflected in the notion of self used in evolutionary theory.[26] Thus, science reflects the dominant views of those who created it. It has been used to sanction and to protect the social order of the Western world from which it comes.
Science as a "Genetic" Body of Knowledge
In the genetic body of science, science is seen as part of culture which has achieved independence and is now the controlling element of the culture.
In recent years, several scholars have reiterated C. P. Snow's view that science has become a culture unto itself (albeit with definite links to its parent culture), and that many "educated" people are totally ignorant of this culture. Here, the proper study of mankind is science, and science is "the center of culture."[27] According to Toffler and Toffler,[28] science (and the technology derived from it) is the defining aspect of our civilization. Indeed, science is what we humans are all about. If one were to ask what is the critical trait that distinguishes humans from animals, the answer is that humans do science. One recent author puts the proposition as follows: "If humans exist on earth for a purpose, it is likely to be for scientific research. It is the one urge that is exclusively human and distinctive of the race."[29]
According to this view, science should be taught as a culture just like any other. Again, Sandra Harding: "We live in a scientific culture; to be scientifically illiterate is simply to be illiterate--a condition of far too many women and men."[30] Science is a creative human endeavor, and some of the conclusions of science (such as the periodic table, the laws of motion, the laws of relativity, the laws of gravity and electromagnetism, the laws of thermodynamics, the laws of heredity, the cell theory, the gene theory, and the theory of evolution) are some of the most creative acts of the human species. Everyone should consider them as part of our heritage.
However, a corollary to this is that science has become the most important part and the controlling entity of our culture. Within the past twenty years, we have gotten our computers, fax machines, email, microwave ovens, walkmen, discmen, boomboxes, CD players, credit bureau data bases, airline booking systems, in vitro fertilization clinics, and video recorders. Meanwhile, jets, antihistamines, tranquilizers, air conditioning, car stereos, antibiotics, oral contraceptives, and hydrogen bombs are all things we (or at least our children) take for granted which did not exist prior to World War II. What else has increased (or improved) so greatly over those years: our art, music, philosophy, or literature? The thing that distinguishes our culture from that of any other is its science. Is it any wonder that it is so envied and feared?
Science as a "Phenotypic" Body of Knowledge
The phenotypic view of science is isomorphic to the phenotypic conception of the self. It values matter and practical utility as more important that abstract theories. Such a science would see biology, chemistry, and physics as steps towards achieving the ends of medicine and engineering. As revolutionary as this may sound, historians of science have long understood that science had two fonts: Descartes' idea of the comprehensive understanding of nature, and Bacon's idea of serving humanity through useful scientific knowledge. We would also do well to remember that biology justified its way into the liberal arts curriculum as a prerequisite for medical students.[31]
Descartes' ideal, of course, was mathematics, and going against this ideal means a major inversion in our understanding of science. The natural sciences, like most of the Academy, are organized along the Great Chain of Being, the theoretical end being considered more important than the practical end. This appears to be true whether one is in the humanities, the social sciences, or the natural sciences. However, it is probably most pronounced in the natural sciences.
A few years ago, a student confided to me that she had trouble convincing herself to major in biology. Biology, she declared, was "so far down on the hierarchy" that she didn't think the best minds would work there. When asked, "What hierarchy?", her answer was: "You know. There's math on the top, then physics, then chemistry, then, down at the bottom, biology." Of course. That hierarchy. We have all heard of that hierarchy, and many of us have accepted it and unthinkingly internalized it. What is it a hierarchy of? Very simply, it is the progression of matter into rationality. Whereas the Great Chain originally represented the extension of rationality over matter throughout the Universe, it now extends merely across the University. Biology deals with dirty matter: blood, guts, menstrual fluid, semen, urine, leaf mold, frogs, jellyfish, lions, tigers, and bears. Chemistry deals with purified and quantified matter: 20 mg/ml NaCl, 4 mM ATP. Physics deals with idealized matter (when it deals with matter at all): ideal gases, electron probability clouds, frictionless surfaces. (If physics deals too much with material, it falls down a branch of the Chain to become engineering). Finally, mathematics claims to have escaped matter altogether !
In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from the heaven.[32]
In a similar vein, Oswald Spengler[33] celebrated "the liberation of geometry from the visual, and of algebra from the notion of magnitude..." The levels of mathematics, it would seem, have replaced the orders of angels in our modern hierarchy. There are, as expected in such a Chain, bridge disciplines. As our students will tell us, Biology spans from lowly ecology to molecular biology, and that molecular biology at the upper end of the Biology Department touches biochemistry at the bottom of the Chemistry Department. Similarly, Physical chemistry is seen as the highest chemistry, and theoretical physics the highest physics. Thus, as one rises up the Chain, matter becomes more and more abstracted until even the idea of matter is no longer present. So the organization and structure of science in the late 20th century remains that of the Great Chain of Being, the traditional neural body politic.
As mentioned earlier, the three dominant views of the body all privilege information over substance, and only the "phenotypic" self privileges matter. Similarly, this alternative view of science exalts the more material sciences such as biology and the more practical parts of chemistry and physics.[34]
Science and the Multicultural Curriculum
Teaching Responsibility through the Neural, Immune, and Phenotypic Bodies of Science
There are numerous reasons for the inclusion of science in the multicultural curriculum. The first reason is obvious: The scientists being trained today are going to have powers far beyond anything in human history. They have to be taught responsibility. Here, the knowledge that science has an "immunological" body is important. Each science has its own history and its own problems: biologists have been responsible for advancing gender and racial hierarchies; chemists have a history of being unconcerned with the environmental effects of their molecules; physicists have to be wary about militarism. Scientists who know the history of their discipline--who know how their science supported racist, imperialist, and sexist agendas, who know how Nazi biopolicy was constructed, who know how eugenics was formulated--are less likely to repeat these errors. It is necessary to bring these issues to the science majors as part of their courses in the science departments. Lectures, laboratory readings, and discussion groups can all be utilized to this end. It is more important for everyone taking genetics to know how it was used in the 1920s than it is for a small group of students to learn about those episodes in their history of science courses.
Second, the "neural" body of science can be improved by the multicultural curriculum. Multicultural awareness can make better science. In the "neural" model, bad science is science that is informed by particular social norms and customs. The multicultural curriculum can locate these peculiarities. If science students realize that their own science has certain social assumptions, then it is not a large step to their realizing that by questioning some of the social assumptions, they are questioning their science. However, the ability to question one's own social assumptions often means learning that one has assumptions, and that is done by knowing another culture. Knowledge of other cultures allows us to reflect on assumptions that we do not usually question. For instance, many gendered assumptions in biology were unquestioned until feminist critiques of biology became available.[35] Similarly, when viewed from Russian or Asian perspectives, several theories in evolutionary biology appear to be grounded in the particularly Anglo-Saxon views of selfhood and society.[36] Knowledge of these alternative concepts of self and society enable us to see the cultural specificities and limitations of our own theories. (Indeed, this present discussion of self and body is limited to the "Western" Academy.) In these ways, a multicultural approach can train better equipped scientists and create better science.
Third, science must be seen as part of our commerce with other cultures. Here, the "phenotypic" model of science is critical. Other cultures often had sciences, and the histories of these interactions are fascinating in their own right. But more than history, our science can have serious effects on the other cultures of the world. In one course on biotechnology, the final exam consists of writing a grant application to apply modern biotechnologies to a problem in the "Third World". The students, of course, has to research what problems are important in such places. Then they have to find out how modern techniques could be implemented, if at all. Are they going to be acceptable to the people who they are expected to help? Why should a particular problem be interesting to a particular culture? Why should certain problems be more important than others? The final examination becomes more than just an exercise in repeating knowledge. It can become a mode of discovery. Such courses show students that science is not done in a cultural vacuum and that science has its limits.
The Replacement of "Western Civ" by "Intro. Bio": The Genetic Body of Science
The genetic view of science states that science is the motor of our society. And this has far-reaching consequences that are already being realized. So far, our discussion of biology has limited it to a relatively small part of the curriculum. That has been its traditional place. But look again at your own school. Look at library budgets, look at enrollment figures, look at course offerings, look at the number of departments at universities. Biology is replacing Western Civilization. More specifically, "Intro. Bio." is replacing "Western Civ" as the course students must have to be informed members of the polity. Even if this statement is true merely at the curriculum level, I do not know if I am comfortable with this idea. However, I think it is coming upon us. The "Western Civ" course died in the 1970s,[37] and the period following its death has been characterized by confusion, especially in the humanities departments, and by the attempt to find a substitute and successor. None has yet been found. Intro. Bio. is getting prepared to fill that niche.
The "Western Civ" course was one of the most consciously and politically constructed programs in all academia. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth than the notion that the standard liberal arts curriculum is apolitical and that we are presently politicizing it. Rather, the "Western Civ" curriculum was founded on the basis of the War Issues Course initiated largely through the insights of a remarkable group of peace-loving professors who worked for the Department of War during 1918-1920. Under the directorship of Dr. Frank Aydelotte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this curriculum aimed "to educate recently conscripted American soldiers about to fight in France...to introduce them to the European heritage in whose defense they were soon to risk their lives. A new tie to Europe was instituted in relation to a national imperative." Historian Gilbert Allardyce continues, " More precisely, it was the child of a strange marriage between war propaganda and the liberal arts."[38]
This course (originally called the War Aims Course) was first given to the technical divisions of the army, and its model was a course that E. D. MacDonald gave at the Wentworth Institute. (MacDonald became the assistant director of the program). It consisted of a series of lectures on "the geographic, racial, economic, and political causes of the War; the responsibility of each nation involved; their ideals and aims, and the duty of the American soldier." As the War Studies Course, it was taught to every student enrolled in the Student Army Training Program, and it included "the historical background to the War, study of European governments, their ideals as set forth in their literatures and philosophies, and their aims." It was a mix of political science, literature, philosophy, and sociology.[39] After the Great War, Aydelotte (now president of Swarthmore College) strove to continue these courses in those schools that had taught them during wartime. He arranged with the World Peace Foundation and the National Board for Historical Service to provide funds for the textbooks and maps. Nearly every college and university responded positively. Aydelotte wrote that "I think the outstanding result of the War Issues course is the so-called 'Contemporary Civilization' course at Columbia, which is required of all Freshmen."[40] Other institutions were to follow Columbia's lead in creating such a course.
The War Studies Course had a heavy Anglo-Saxon bias to it, as might be expected of a wartime course celebrating the alliance of Britain and the United States and the rescue of European democracy by its American descendents. Aydelotte was an Anglophile in many of his academic and diplomatic pursuits. Indeed, the whole idea for the War Issues course began when Aydellote "went over to Wentworth Institute, inspected their work, and lectured to a group of the men on our relationships with England and Anglo-Saxon ideals of democracy".[41] This love of British culture was not lost on Aydellote's British friends. One English wartime correspondent confided to Aydellote (in a private and confidential letter) that he saw America as the successor to Britain in bringing "English social and political ideals" to the world. Moreover, as long as America won the war by championing these ideals, "I shall feel just as much pride and pleasure in her triumph as in a triumph for these islands."[42]
What we think as the "standard" curriculum is anything but apolitical. It was created for a particular political purpose and was framed to reflect particular national aims. The multicultural curriculum can be seen as attempting the same type of reform. But while the reformers of 1918 had only to deal with European countries, our world has enlarged such that other nations must also be included. However, no one knows what "World Culture(s)" is or should be. What is to be put in? What is to be left out? What counts as a culture? Is there such a thing as a pure culture, a pure tradition? These arguments get reinvented daily in meetings of educational curriculum committees across the country. Meanwhile, nothing exists to replace "Western Civ."
And the most obvious successor is "Intro. Bio." The equilibrium within the body politic between the physical and social bodies is changing toward the study of the physical body. Whether one agrees or disagrees with sociobiology and the Human Genome Project, these are the artifacts of an academic society wherein biological explanations are superseding social explanations of culture.
There are several reasons for the ascendancy of Biology. First, Biology (as a discipline) still maintains that there are truths to be discovered by the creative interaction of human minds with nature. While the humanities have adopted the anarchy of postmodernism and have given up the notion of truth; while physics has relinquished its leadership of the sciences after quantum probability theory told it there was no way of determining truth; while the social sciences have fragmented in a massive identity crisis; Biology has become vigorous, multidisciplinary, and relatively well funded. Its reliance on living matter has prevented it from going the route of physics, and its existence within a country suspicious of evolution has kept it from embracing postmodernism. It cannot afford to say that it does not have a more valid, truth-seeking program than that of the Creationists.[43] Biology thus salvages one of the most fundamental components of the "Western Civ" tradition, the discovery of truth.
Second, biology deals with the social issues of our day. Its research informs our discussions of race, gender, class, ethnicity, health, food production, industrialization, land use, birth control, law, and education. (Not that biology necessarily should inform discussions in all these areas, but it certainly does). Knowing biology is becoming essential for our social discourse. With the demise of the "Western Civ" tradition and with nothing to replace it, Biology is taking over its role in the construction of our social judgements. Moreover, at a time when people will not speak of cultures, they can see biology as underlying them all. If part of the value of the Western Civ. course was to provide an informed electorate, "Intro. Bio" is taking on this role.
Third, biology is where the action is, and it's where the money is. Every area of biology is expanding, whether it be molecular biology, medical research, or ecology. Biology departments across the country are experiencing enormous increases in majors. There are numerous reasons for this. It is an incredibly exciting time to be a biologist, and the phenomena of life are intrinsically fascinating. The National Science Foundation's push to make science (especially biology) more fashionable in the secondary schools has also worked. Biology is a growth industry, and capital has moved into it, whether it be molecular biotechnology, computer-aided prosthetics manufacture, rational drug design, transgenic crops, or environmental monitoring systems. What is more important than health, food production, and the environment? The ascendancy of Biology is being fueled by important social concerns.
Fourth, Biology is beginning to provide models for society. This is nothing new. The state-as-an-organism model is implicit in the body politic metaphor, and biologists as varied as Spencer, Hertwig, Just, Goldschmidt, Metchnikov, and Virchow have seen the body as the proper model for society. However, Biology has never had much power in the curriculum, and its role in producing explanatory stories for society was not taken very seriously. This has changed. Biological stories are becoming increasingly important in our construction of legal, educational, and health systems. The rhetoric of the Human Genome Project and sociobiology has fashioned stories of culture being genetically defined, and the effect is snowballing. Already, Departments of Psychiatry no longer focus on consciousness, but on neuronal receptors. Education is seen as being wasted on those whose minds are not programmed to receive the teaching.[44] What is legal or illegal, right or wrong, are being redefined in terms of some ill-defined biological imperatives. The "differences" between males and females, blacks and whites, upper class and lower class, European and Asian, are seen as being genetically determined and largely indifferent to social modification. There are other stories coming from other parts of biology (epigenetic interactions from embryology[45]; homeostatic interactions from ecology[46]; new origin stories from primatology[47]). What they have in common is using biology to create stories that define our culture. What had been provided by Greek mythology, the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Rousseau, and Goethe is being provided by our interpretations of DNA, cells, organs, animals, plants, and ecosystems.[48] If Biology is going to be used to create such stories, the history and critique of biology is more needed now than ever.
We are returning to Aesop, making parables from our study of animals and their parts. But are these stories valid or one-sided? Many of the ones told today certainly are one-sided, and this is why critiques of biology are important and why scientists should know them! Turbulent times (and science and technology add to the turbulence) will demand an order. "Western civ" is not there to order them, and no substitute has worked. I would argue that Biology is going to provide the order that society has been unable to provide. While I have great confidence that biology can provide meaningful, beautiful, and robust stories which could foster harmony, cooperation, and mutual respect among peoples, it can also produce (and has produced) some of the most pernicious and hateful narratives of human history. Periods of disorder have provided the preconditions for totalitarian narratives and governments. All of a sudden, Biology and its historians have more responsibility than they ever wanted.