Müller-Wille Staffan
ESRC Research Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis), University of Exeter, Byrne House, St. Germans Road, Exeter EX4 4PJ, UK.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2010 Sep;41(3):225-31. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.07.008. Epub 2010 Aug 2.
The cell is not only the structural, physiological, and developmental unit of life, but also the reproductive one. So far, however, this aspect of the cell has received little attention from historians and philosophers of biology. I will argue that cell theory had far-reaching consequences for how biologists conceptualized the reproductive relationships between germs and adult organisms. Cell theory, as formulated by Theodor Schwann in 1839, implied that this relationship was a specific and lawful one, that is, that germs of a certain kind, all else being equal, would produce adult organisms of the same kind, and vice versa. Questions of preformation and epigenesis took on a new meaning under this presupposition. The question then became one of whether cells could be considered as autonomous agents producing adult organisms of a given species, or whether they were the product of external, organizing forces and thus only a stage in the development of the whole organism. This question became an important issue for nineteenth-century biology. As I will demonstrate, it was the view of cells as autonomous agents which helped both Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to think of inheritance as a lawful process.
细胞不仅是生命的结构、生理和发育单位，也是生殖单位。然而，到目前为止，细胞的这一方面几乎没有受到生物学史学家和哲学家的关注。我将论证，细胞学说对生物学家如何概念化生殖细胞与成年生物体之间的生殖关系产生了深远影响。1839年由西奥多·施旺提出的细胞学说暗示，这种关系是一种特定的、有规律的关系，也就是说，在其他条件相同的情况下，某种类型的生殖细胞会产生相同类型的成年生物体，反之亦然。在这种预设下，预成论和渐成论的问题有了新的意义。问题于是变成了细胞是否可以被视为产生特定物种成年生物体的自主主体，或者它们是否是外部组织力量的产物，因此仅仅是整个生物体发育的一个阶段。这个问题成为了19世纪生物学的一个重要问题。正如我将证明的，将细胞视为自主主体的观点帮助查尔斯·达尔文和格雷戈尔·孟德尔将遗传视为一个有规律的过程。
