O contextualismo na história da teoria evolutiva ao longo do século XX:  uma entrevista com Betty Smocovitis

Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes; Anderson Ricardo Carlos; Bruno Fancio Lima; Marcelo Monetti Pavani

doi:10.53727/rbhc.v15i2.797

Authors

Maria Elice de Brzezinski Prestes Universidade de São Paulo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9839-1219
Anderson Ricardo Carlos Universidade de São Paulo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5027-7118
Bruno Fancio Lima Universidade de São Paulo https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4971-2821
Marcelo Monetti Pavani Universidade de São Paulo https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5335-1857

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.53727/rbhc.v15i2.797

Keywords:

evolutionary synthesis, history of biology, historical contextualism, evolutionary biology

Abstract

In 1996, American historian of biology Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis published a must-read book for 20th-century history of biology: Unifying biology: the evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology. Although the subtitle indicates the cut of the historical event of the 1930s and 1940s, which led to the so-called modern synthesis or synthetic theory of evolution, the book covers several sub-areas of biological sciences, including those that were left out of the aforementioned theory. Also more than the already trivial account of the achievements of the “architects” of the synthesis, Smocovitis offered a historiographically new interpretation. Instead of the apex of an almost spontaneous, cumulative and linear process, the author places the synthesis as a “moving target”, but long-desired, that is the unification of science, nourished by the “positive sciences” of the 19th century and definitely marked by the logical empiricism of the first decades of the 20th century. After contextualizing the interviewers' starting point in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and summarizing the aforementioned matters, this article brings an interview carried out virtually with the author on November 17, 2021. In addition to the topics covered, we were able to know a little more about how the author conceived the work and how the writing process of her Unifying biology took place. We were especially interested in her talking about the strong contextualism that renewed the history of science in the 1990s and today is sometimes ignored by young researchers in the area. Our interest was to explore how she combined her deep knowledge of the history of biology and its historiography with new trends in science studies. Other topics ended up being brought to the conversation, such as the theoretical paradigms underlying the history and philosophy of biology, the current state of institutionalization of the history of science in the US, the obstacles to the popularization of science and the impact of authoritarian governments on academic activity.

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